Inside Out: D
by NexusOscura
Summary: A strange girl sat by the far wall, the air around her cold and depressive. One day, that girl meets another who can help her recover. But as the walk down the path of recovery, an Entity makes itself known and the Silver-haired Girl's family secrets may rise out from their fiery tomb.
1. Disillusion:The Girl by the Far Wall

AN: A kind of dark story that may become lighter as time goes on. I would like to say that this idea came from my habit of making depressing characters, and may have some sad moments as it goes on, with the Sadness Meter spiking occasionally, so be warned. Unless I fail at making things sad, then don't.

I'm only saying this once, Inside Out and its characters belong to Pixar. That'll be all for now!

* * *

They say that the girl by the far wall was once experimented on to make her emotionless in order to make her a child soldier, others say that she lost her heart and now feels nothing. No one dared approach her, thinking that her emotionlessness would allow her to kill them without a thought or mercilessly torture them into the same type of being she "was." But as much as they thought they knew of her "past," they didn't know how far from the truth the rumors were. Then, someone decided to approach her, not by choice, but by virtue of the girl's table having the only empty spot during lunchtime.

Setting a plate of air-cooled tater tots and chicken nuggets on the table, a blonde girl in a rainbow, long sleeved shirt and blue jeans sat beside a silver-haired girl wearing a black, sleeveless hoody, white tee and gray pants, their respectively green and black Converse shoes lightly touching the hard schoolyard ground despite the latter's greater height. The blonde looked up into the corner of the emotionless girl's red and blue eye, taking in the pale skin around it as well as the sorrow behind the unmoving orb as it stared down into a second plate of the day's lunch. After a while, the blonde looked at her own food, then at a few eyes that had turned in their direction once the students noticed the quiet scene.

Turning toward the blonde, the silver-haired girl looked at her in mild bewilderment, her eyes showing a glint of joy so small, the sorrow washed it away not a moment after. The blonde noticed and faced her once more, now seeing the full extent of her hidden pain and seemingly knowing what had caused emotionless façade to dominate the girl's features. At the gasping of everyone, the blonde presented her hand to the taller girl, her desire to comfort her growing with every moment she stared into those eyes that had lost so much, yet shined with the saddest of emotional lights no one could've seen unless they looked.

"Hi," the blonde said, forgetting her meal and the small crowd around them, "I'm Riley." The silver-haired girl stared at the gesture presented to her, internally weighing her options and past experiences, but ultimately deciding on returning it, knowing that in order to heal her wounded heart, she would need to give it to another once more.

"Alice," she introduced herself as, taking in Riley's hand with her own, slightly larger one, the smallest semblance of a smile manifesting itself on her once unmoving mask. Riley took in the pale appendage, feeling the pain it once felt through empathy alone and almost knowing every sorrowful moment of the girl's life in that one touch. They stayed like that for a while, the crowd around them returning to their lunches long before they themselves faced their plates. Inside both of their minds, their respective Sadness were alone at the consoles, the other emotions giving them space within their own Headquarters, one making the blonde as empathic as she could be, the other letting her past flow freely, knowing the path to healing like her own blue skin.

-3-

The next day, there she was again, alone, at the far wall, her meal of stew left to cool and her dessert separate from her tray. Alice waited as routine repeated itself in endless loneliness, yet not as sad and outwardly emotionless as usual. Just like yesterday, Riley sat beside her, yellow jacket and black pants contrasting the taller girl's white dress and blue vest. The two looked at each other in silence, turning to their meals after a quiet exchange of feelings. Even as whispers rose from the schoolyard of the strange scene, they tranquilly ate in the presence of one another, preparing themselves for a sad, yet recovering conversation as soon as they finished.

Riley was the first of the two to finish her meal, the ninth-grader pushing her tray forward and resting her head on her arms. She glanced at the silver-haired girl, spotting a curious aura around her for just a moment before noticing the discarded dessert. She eyed it curiously, her blue eyes taking in the red gelatin in its small cup and wondering why it was left out. Beside her, Alice pushed her own tray aside and, from her bag, procured a small red box and a flask.

Pulling the top off and using it as a cup, the sad girl poured herself a milky substance, filling up to half the stainless steel cup before turning to the box and removing the lid. Within the red box were small squares of chocolate, each one unsweetened and naturally bitter, each one fresh and homemade. Dropping two pieces into her beverage, the silver-haired girl offered the blonde a piece of her own little treasure, yesterday's small smile resurrecting itself with twice the force.

"Are you sure?" Riley asked, unsure of what else to say as Alice nodded in response, her usual mask returning rapidly. Riley took the small square and carefully inspected it, taking note of the small details engraved into its brown surface. At the top of the square was a rose, etched with a detail so fine that the Minnesotan could count every single petal, compare it with an actual rose and find both counts to be almost identical. On the other side, however, was a different story; a house set ablaze, a little girl crying in front of an open door, a woman's face in the flames, a sad story told with a still, monotone image. The scene on the chocolate square made Riley shed a small tear, knowing well who the child in the image was.

Wiping the tear off her face, Riley flipped the square back to the rose and took it to her mouth, stopping only when she heard a smooth, low voice from beside her.

"I'd like to warn you," Alice began, taking a small sip of the beverage, "it is a bit bitter." Riley looked at her, feeling as if those words applied to both the chocolate and to Alice's as of yet untold life. Slowly, she bit down on the square, feeling as the bitterness explained to her the scene displayed on its underside, from the powerful burn of the fire illustrated to the tears of both beings on the etching. In just one bite, Riley knew the pains of the girl beside her and almost began to cry as the chocolate placed a huge pressure upon her heart.

Swallowing, Riley turned back to Alice, to the eyes that wanted to cry so much, yet couldn't simply because she'd run out of tears for the day, maybe even her life. She wanted to comfort the larger girl, allow her to wash her with her sorrows so that she could recover from the pain that she carried without the help of others. Alice, in return, wanted just then and there to drop the mask she had placed on herself to keep from collapsing, from breaking every moment into an eternal river of dried tears and sorrow, but knew that if she were to do that, she would never stop crying; she knew she must recover before she ever took the mask off.

Soon, the bell rung, drawing all students back into the building. All except the two by the far wall, whose feelings weighed over them so much, their feet felt stuck to the ground. Riley opened her mouth to try and say something, but the sound of a light sob stopped her. Instead, she opted to hug the larger, silver-haired girl, thinking of ways to help her. Inside her mind, Riley's Sadness gently pushed a lever, then looked toward Joy, who was searching through the Idea Shelves for anything and everything that may help. In Joy's hand were several blue Idea Bulbs, with some yellow ones scarcely spread among the growing pile. Sadness walked over to her, deciding to ease Joy's load by taking half of it and bringing it to the console.

"How do you think we can help her?" asked Joy, whose voice was filled with a worry opposite of her usual free-spirited demeanor. Sadness looked at her while taking her half of the Bulbs in her arms, slowly shaking her large blue head.

"I don't know, Joy," she replied before walking back to the console, where Anger, Fear and Disgust calmly waited and added but the smallest of their influences unto Riley. She set the Idea Bulbs by Anger, inspecting the top-most one closely. It was a bright blue Bulb, the idea within involving the help of Riley's friends. It may have been the right idea to help Alice out of her sorrow and possible depression, but Sadness knew that they had to consider others first.

Meanwhile, inside Alice's mind, her Sadness was approached by Fear, who had been the only one to note the sound of the bell. The tear-like emotion turned to the nerve-like one, large tears mounting up on both of their eyes as blue memories recalled themselves as they had had before, whenever Alice lost someone. They both turned to Joy, the star-like emotion's glow having faded long ago, when the explosion consumed the life of their friends. The blue-haired emotion looked at them, his demeanor matching Sadness on a really bad day rather than what he should be, and made his way up the ramp to their living space, knowing that Alice had little need for him now.

As Joy walked up the ramp, Anger walked down, toward Alice's own Idea Shelves, and started searching for an Idea she saw the day before. After a quiet moment of solemn shuffling, the red emotion found the blue and yellow Idea Bulb, hidden below the rest. She took it upstairs with her, remarking that they may need some time before implementing that one idea and reminding Fear to keep an eye out for Suicidal Thoughts Island.

"I know it's on its last legs," she said, opening the door to the living space, where Joy played with the remnants of Figments from Wonder Island, "but it could repair itself at any moment, given our current feelings." She walked inside just as Fear pulled at a lever and pushed a few buttons, urging Alice to go to class before she was late. Slowly, Alice pulled herself from the embrace, her vest stained in tears and her dress ruffled heavily. She looked at the school building, sighing away the heaviness as much as she could and whispering a quiet "Thank you" before walking toward her class. Riley stayed seated for a little while longer, feeling every emotion packed in those two words for all of two minutes before she too went for class.

-3-

About a month later, Riley found herself back at the far wall, staring at the empty spot where she had met Alice every school day ever since that quiet morning. The bell had rung a while ago, and Riley's friends were calling out to her, yet all she heard was silence, like a quiet static that blocked out the world, white noise covering even her own thoughts. Sighing, she turned to the school building and slowly made her way to class, joined by her worrying friends.

-3-

Meanwhile, a girl walked down an inclined street, phone in hand as she uploaded a video to a video-sharing site, were she earned most of what kept her alive by posting videos as part of a group that called themselves the Wonderland Kids. The video in particular was an unusual one, considering the groups Modus Operandi, a "Face-Reveal" type of video the sad girl had recorded yesterday after finding herself actually smiling for longer than a minute. Under the username SaneinMadness, she watched as the video finished uploading as she stopped to wait for a car to pass by.

Despite her small glint of happiness, the girl could still feel the weight of her depression eat away at her Joy and slowly begin with her Anger, her only feeling at nearly every moment being a dry Sadness that constantly and unwillingly made its presence known much more than ever before. Sighing, she crossed the street and continued her way downward.

-3-

At the Andersen house, Bill, with a blue buttoned shirt and jeans, shuffled through a video-sharing app, searching for anything to bring the boredom out of the workless day. Earlier, a meeting he had scheduled was canceled because everyone else had called in sick, leaving him with little to do other than surf the channel of a "Let's-Player" one of his co-workers told him about, a young girl named SaneinMadness who always seemed to play with a default feeling of sadness, yet somehow seemed to carry some energy behind it all. He looked for a video that would catch his attention, one that he could enjoy and lift the boredom off of him.

Suddenly, the message tone of his phone sounded, a small notification telling him of a video that had just been posted by non-other than SaneinMadness at that very moment. As he tapped the notification, causing his phone to load the video, Jill passed by him, dressed in a green blouse and cream pants, her eye catching the curiosity in his. She stopped what she was doing, his curiosity becoming hers as the video loaded up with an intro featuring a silver-haired caricature of a girl, dressed in a black dress with a bright white apron, letting herself fall into a rather deep rabbit hole. Images of past videos whooshed past the girl, each one of a different genre or sub-genre, but mostly of the horror or sad kinds.

"What're you watching?" Jill asked, nearly startling her husband. She watched as the girl in the video landed on her naked feet and opened her large blood red eyes with oceanic blue centers and looked around with a nearly blank wonder as a white rabbit bounced by her, dropping a rather large screen before her, which then zoomed in and turned on to reveal the channel's icon.

"A new video by a user named SaneinMadness," Bill answered looking at his beloved for a moment before turning to his phone.

"Isn't that the girl Jason told you about?" Jill inquired, her eyes focusing on the image of a girl with long silver hair covering her face, the divide of the roots over the far side of her left eye. The girl's skin was pale white, as if no pigment existed beneath it and her clothing was but a black hoodie over a white long sleeved shirt.

"The same one," Bill answered again, his free hand scratching his semi-permanent stubble as he inspected the unusual video before him and his wife. They fell in silence as the girl on the phone started introducing herself to the audience she knew she would receive, mostly subscribers but maybe someone new.

"Salutations, everyone," the girl started, awkwardly waving a hand in the direction she thought the camera was before turning to her left, asking someone out of frame whether or not she was facing the right way. After getting her answer, a mad sounding "yes, my boy" from a voice belonging only to HatterofMadness, she turned back to the camera and finished her introduction, "Sane here. Today, we're going to do something different, something Madness and the others declared "bloody mad" before telling me to go for it in their own curious way."

Just then, a knock was heard from the front door, causing both viewers to turn to its direction as Sane began thanking someone from her life, a girl who had helped her over the past month. Bill stood up and handed his phone to his wife, telling her that he'll get the door and could watch the video in a minute.

"Are you sure?" Jill asked, eyeing her husband curiously. Bill just looked at her sheepishly, mentally forming an excuse, thinking that a package he had ordered a week ago had just arrived, a surprise for his loving wife for her coming birthday.

"Yeah," he said, "you watch it. You seem to be interested in it as much as I am. Besides," his excuse finally formulated, "I think that's Andrew at the door. He said he was coming by to leave some files." Turning around, he mentally both sighed and slapped himself at forgetting to redirect the package to his workplace. Behind him, Jill looked unconvinced, but continued to watch the video, where the girl had picked up a brush and began removing hair from her face.

At the door, Bill found himself in a light panic, nerves jumping at the timing of the package's probable arrival. He counted himself lucky that he was at the house, lest the surprise may have been ruined. Steeling himself, Bill grabbed the knob of the door and slowly pulled it open, finding himself both relieved and surprised that, instead of a mailman, he found a rather tall girl with pale skin, white hair and red and blue eyes. He looked at her, from her nearly expressionless face to her paper white skin, from her black dress to her shoeless feet, then, finally to her sad eyes, which carried with them a question and a pain, a plight and a hurting, a past that never seemed to stop haunting the owner of the eyes. Suddenly, Bill felt both sad and alone, further lost in the girl's sorrow the more he looked at those eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually a few seconds, the girl looked down, releasing Bill from his trance and leaving him confused. Inside Bill's mind, his Sadness was being consoled after the experience, his blue frame quivering in sobs and pain that seemed to have passed from the girl at the monitor directly unto him. Joy and Fear were the first off their seats, having felt the pain in subdued amounts. Right after them was Disgust, who had gotten some tissues out of some place or another and offered them to everyone who needed them, especially Sadness. Anger just turned to the scene, his faces a mixture of pain and confusion, with a slight dab of curiosity as to how they felt that way just by looking into someone's eyes. After a moment, when a voice came from in front of them, he called them back to their seats as calmly as he could.

"Alright, everyone," his gruff voice called, the small group of comforting Emotions looking at him with an unusually low amount of energy, "we need to get to work here. We just froze up on a girl at our doorstep and we need to concentrate." He looked directly at Sadness and continued, "Sadness, I need you to compose yourself. We need you to come up with the proper questions here, this time. It seems we may need it." Sadness nodded and everyone around him took their seats as he slowly came up with the questions.

"We need to ask her to repeat herself," Joy said, noting that they missed the girl's words. Anger agreed and turned to Fear, who pressed a button to his left and carefully pulled a lever from Anger's part of the console. Outside, Bill recovered from his confused daze as the girl before him finished talking. He looked at her, taking note of how she held herself and feeling more of the sad pain from earlier, but kept strong against it.

"Can you repeat that, miss…?" he asked, trailing on the last word as he noticed he never got her name.

"Alice," the girl responded, refusing to make eye contact, lest the full onslaught of her transmitted emotions take over the man before her again. "I asked if Riley's home? She told me to come by." Her voice seemed low and filled with a strange expectancy, one made up of mostly sadness rather than excitement or happiness, making Bill wonder what had happened in the girl's life to get her to that point. Shaking his head, Bill carefully thought of his next words as he saw the girl looked a bit crestfallen at the answer.

"She's at school, probably wondering where you've been," he explained, finally coming up with the right question of the moment. "Are you alright? You look a bit disappointed." Alice found the courage to look up, into the eyes through which she accidentally inflicted pain to her friend's father. She thought about all the possible answers to the question, most of them lies she had repeated over and over again in the past, even to herself, and decided on going with the truth, as she had done with Riley after their third meeting.

"Not really," she said, restraining her sorrow and wondering whether or not her mind had skipped a day as had happened in the past, "but at least I've got help for it." That last bit was sort of true; although not professional, Riley's presence in Alice's life had had a slow healing effect over the last month, albeit a bit too slow for the tall girl's mental health.

"That's good to hear," came Bill's response as another question formed in his mind. He took a look inside, towards the dining room, where his wife was, before turning back with a small offer. "Wanna come in? It may be a bit chilly out there." The girl nodded and carefully stepped in, taking note of the quaint interior and how the house looked a bit smaller on the outside. Bill took her to the dining room, where she seated herself in front of Jill, who had just finished the video Bill left her with. They looked at each other, Alice noting how Riley got their recessive genes, as both parents had brown hair, while Jill stared in light shock at the girl who was before her. Before she could speak, Bill asked Alice his second question.

"How have things been going between you and our daughter, Alice?" he said as he sat down beside his wife, the air in the room turning both lighter and actually happier by a small degree. Alice analyzed the words spoken to her, asking herself just how much they knew of the situation. She looked between the two adults, feeling what they felt and almost hearing their thoughts before coming up with a proper way to explain things.

"She's helping me with my sorrow," she said with the smallest of smiles, "helping me go through my depression, which I now admit I have. She told me to come here, to meet up with her group of friends so that they may help me further." She looked at her hands, at her visible veins, thinking of the entire month, of every lunchtime she and Riley spent getting to know each other even though she felt, at the time, that the blonde could've been anywhere else. She thought of the tales of her past, the scarring stories that she slowly shared with the girl, of the fire that consumed her mother, the plane crash that took her uncle, the explosion that stole the lives of her only friends and left her with only a minor bruise and a light burn, and her expression fell.

"I-is something wrong?" Jill asked, concern written on her features. Within her mind, her Joy had found the one thing that could contain her own excitement at one of the greatest coincidences in her life, which was mixed with Fear's own surprised shock, the sudden change in someone's state of being. She looked over to Sadness, who had noticed the shift in Alice's posture; the lost smile, the slouched shoulders, the misty eyes about to release tears. Even the air around the girl seemed to cool sharply in sorrow. She worriedly waved in her coworker/meta-sister's direction, getting her attention faster than she could even form what to say.

"W-what're we gonna do, Sadness?" she finally said after recollecting her thoughts. The other's watched as Sadness went deep in thought, formulating responses to what the girl before them would say. She looked at her companions, taking note of their expressions, before answering.

"Whatever we can, Joy?" She then, along with the others, waited, their gazes concerned beyond the word, as if Alice's Sadness was transmitting to them. On the other side of the table, that statement couldn't be any closer to the truth. Alice's Sadness manned the large console, alone, waiting for the others to return from the City, where Joy had left to earlier in the week, his glow gone and his mood more bitter than their chocolate. The blue emotion danced to and fro, pushing as many buttons as she could, pulling all the levers as fast as possible, trying to make Alice respond with the proper words, to say a fragment of the truth, clue them in on the girl's pain, giving them a small feel of it, even if Alice's relative "small" was colossal to her hosts.

When she heard the rushing of wind behind her small, round form, the black vest wearing emotion turned to face the small search party that were her companions; Anger, her flame small and her face frustrated, Fear, with his posture low and defeated, and Disgust, with her silent expression about to break, all walked into Headquarters emptyhanded once more, as all previous searches went. Joy had evaded them yet again, his knowledge of the City being far greater than the rest of theirs combined. Sadness sighed as she turned back to the console and pressed one last button, their host finally responding to the question asked.

"A lot of things, actually." That said it all, held all she could place on it. Alice let the words hang over the room in silence for a few seconds, measuring their reactions, trying to feel and hear what they thought of them before continuing. She lifted her gaze and looked straight into Bill's eyes, the brown-haired man uncertain of what to say and the Emotions behind the eyes as quiet as space. Soon, the silver-haired girl could almost see a blue speck behind the eyes press down a button that brought about a response to her words.

"Want to…?" Mr. Andersen hesitated, not knowing what to expect from one who may be the saddest person he had ever met. He looked at his wife, who looked just as hesitant as him, but determined to help to the best of her abilities, and found so determination to continue, himself. "Want to talk about it?"

Alice looked at him, relieved to find that they wanted to hear her out, to help her like Riley did, and would've found herself internally smiling at their compassion and empathy. She closed her eyes, thinking back to the many horrors of her life, the traumas that brought her there, to the reason she came to the abode in the first place, although finding a strange comfort in the fact that the people she was with were not who she intended to be, yet where just as good as the bright alternative that was her friend.


	2. Damaged: The Joy lost in the City

On a cold day of November, a tall girl laid on the fifth floor of an abandoned construction site, one that had unfortunately lost its budget in a bad decision on part of the site owner. The girl lay naked and dormant, her frame covered only by a small sheet she had bought a long time ago, when she began fending for herself. The cold wind played with her exposed arms, causing goosebumps to spread across them as the cold hands went to her back, earning a light shiver from the Silver-haired Girl as she awoke.

Slowly, she sat up, her red and blue eyes blurry from sleep and her usually kept hair a tangled mess of a mane. She quietly yawned, internally contemplating buying or renting herself a home despite her young age, although her appearance may help her out up until legal documents became involved. She looked around her spacious living space, looking for the bag in which she stored her clothes, finding the red bag directly underneath the small hanging mirror she used to fix herself. She looked beside the bag and found a small stack of books she had been reading the other day, the top one opened to about half way into its contents.

Through her tired blurry vision, Alice saw her angled reflection, messy hair in a light tangle and pale bare skin covered in a fine layer of dust. She got up and closer to the mirror, seeing the marks on her face where her fingers were during the latter half of the night. Slowly, she pulled out from her bag a silver colored brush and calmly tamed the mess that was her hair, contemplating whether she should wipe off the dirt or wash it off. She went for the latter, knowing it was faster and that she needed to be at school early.

Looking around for the gallons of water she had around for bathing, Alice picked a set of clothes, a white tee, blue vest, black pants, some white satin undergarments, and a towel, and went down to the second floor to wash the dirt off of her skin. As she did, inside her mind, a certain blue Emotion ran around Headquarters, taking boxes from the Train of Thought to several spots within the large main room. She weaved to and fro, placing a box of Facts beside Disgust before getting a box of Opinions, taking the Daydreams to Anger's "break chair", where the brick-like Emotion was reading a newspaper headlined "ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER GLOOM", setting a box of tea ingredients by Fear, who was preparing himself a rather weak mixture until the fresh box arrived; Sadness was in an unusual rush. She looked over the console, a box of random Abstract Thoughts held over her head as Alice preformed the near mechanical act of rinsing off dirt, and practically felt a slight breeze coming from the view screen. Something big was about to happen.

"Let me help you with that," an energy-drained female voice said from above her, the weight of the Abstract Thoughts being lifted off of Sadness' small frame. The blue Emotion looked up to find the faded, unusually early female form of Joy, whose glow had completely vanished and whose shifts between genders had become infrequent as of late. She looked perpetually exhausted, despite her name having been taken out of the Dream Duty list about half a year ago, and over all aged with stress and sleep deprivation lines. Her yellow skin had almost become white and her blue hair was starting to fall from its usually pointed style, Disgust having to put hairpins on her in order to keep it up. Even her dress seemed desaturated, with the blue flower print becoming gray over a whitish green.

"Joy," Sadness gasped, looking at the others, who had noticed the cheerless being just as she placed the box bellow the ramp upstairs. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, living," the blue-haired Emotion answered in a tired, sarcastic tone as she walked over to the console, pushing a lever and earning a feint yellow glow from it as she got there. She watched as Alice grabbed the towel she brought with her and began to dry herself down, the expression on the yellow Emotion's face perfectly matching the outside girl's, empty, mournful and all around devoid of any true happiness despite the girl's slow recovery. Joy sighed, knowing that despite the console's glow, Alice wasn't feeling her and hasn't for a very long time. The console's glow was only there to soothe Joy, but the effect wore off a year and a half ago and now the glow was as hollow as the Emotion producing it.

Disgust walked up to Joy, green notepad in hand as she presented her a page filled with whatever encouraging words she could think of. Her consoling efforts fell on blind eyes, as Joy failed to see meaning or reason to read the well-meant phrases and simply sighed again before pushing a few buttons and pulling the lever she pushed earlier and turning to leave.

"Thanks for the effort, old friend," Joy responded to Disgust's crestfallen face as she moved to her usual spot in Headquarters, right behind the Core Memory Module, where she would sit until three in the afternoon without interacting with anything. Or so the others thought.

With fallen expressions, the others got to the console, each of their early morning tasks done to the best of their abilities and the desire to help Joy vanquished by Joy's own depressive aura. Sadness took one last look at the faded Emotion, taking note of the rapidly brightening white glow around her friend's shifting frame as, for the first time in a week, Joy switched genders. Still feeling the breeze from the Screen's direction, the tear-like Emotion became as cautious as Fear with how she saw Joy sitting, toward the Islands as opposed to the console.

"Sadness," Anger called in her deep, thick voice, her demeanor changing to its usual state, "we need to get moving." Sadness turned to the red woman, their gazes meeting for a second before the blue Emotion, dressed in a black hooded vest and black shorts, walked up beside the red one, dressed in a black-laced gothic dress. Outside, Alice was tying the laces of her left Converse shoe, feeling a bit brighter than the day before and ready, if barely, to face the day with her normal demeanor. She stood up and went for her backpack, a black flame lighting up where the water was spilled and vanishing just as the vapors spread. As she got to the bag, she stared at where the fire was, mentally slapping herself for such a slip up, a display of what most of her denied since its discovery, a possibility she would never want to think of.

Forgetting about the incident, Alice left the abandoned building through the back alley and went her way to school, hoping Riley would meet her there later on, like every day for the past month. Within her mind, Joy felt the urge to access the console, but fought it with all his might, knowing his plans must be put in motion as the Winds grow stronger. He had but a few moments, not enough time to be at the console and return to his spot, behind the Module, and knew that so long as someone was at the console, once the plan was set in motion, Alice would still be able to feel him despite Joy being nowhere near Headquarters. In a few days, D****** would…

Joy felt it, the spark of his being had been fanned, a small, blue colored flame poked its way where his heart would be; it was now or never.

At the console, the other Emotions conversed amongst each other, their words matching Alice's thoughts in small, faint ways. Only Sadness seemed distracted from the conversation, occasionally looking around and shivering at the chill of Change. Joy knew he had to go now, he knew he had to open the door and step into the City just as his spark grew to an intense flame of pent up energy that would soon become critical, allowing his plan to go on even after he **l* into *e** ***u****. The yellow Emotion stood up, facing the Islands of Personality and taking a deep breath as the flame at his heart grew in size and intensity, the temperature in Headquarters rising by several degrees from the existence of the flame in its small size alone.

*e****r lifted his right arm to about chest level, a blue light forming before his straightened fingers and expanding quickly, faster than the flame spreading over his body. He made sure to make it his size, that the portal was hidden by his form. The yellow Emotion stared at the quiet, swirling vortex before him, the portal just large enough for him to squeeze through without anyone noticing. He resisted the urge to turn around and say goodbye, knowing the pain of doing so may cause him to fade away, never to be felt until the last stages of recovery. At least his plan allowed for his presence to still be felt, un-involvement of the console notwistandi…

"Joy?" a small voice called from behind him, the vector and tone of the noise suggesting only one Emotion who could be standing behind the yellow one. Joy looked at who was addressing him, making sure not to show the blue flame on his heart. He stared into Sadness' blue eyes, pangs of guilt showing up on his faded spark as the orbs asked a silent question. For a moment, Joy felt that maybe his plan was a bit too extreme, a bit too much like *****d* to truly bring any comfort onto his aching self. That moment went away as the Winds of Change picked up slightly, causing the blue flames on Joy to spread and grow into a painful, intense, *u**fy*** pyre that blasted the nearly unbreakable windows of Headquarters apart.

As the pressure of the flames vanished into the outside atmosphere, the other Emotions turned to the Module, surprise and fright plastered on their features. Fear was so startled he lost his color, Disgust was so vexed she failed to notice her hair standing up, and Anger, who was used to her own heat, was surprised at actually still feeling hot from the sudden eruption. But no Emotion's surprise could hope to match Sadness', who had noticed what the flames were and was the only one to see Joy leave.

Sadness lay on the console, the blast having flung her there as soon as the Winds fanned them. She stared wide eyed at the Core Memory Module's direction, ignoring the intense pain coursing through her being as she slid off of her terminal and slowly made her way to where Joy used to be. The world around her seemed to be filled with a constant ringing that blocked out all other noise as the image of the blue flames burned itself onto her mind. She knew what the flames meant, and she didn't like the thought of the pain Joy felt.

"Joy," she whispered into the air, "you're Hurting."

-3-

She felt it, the first change, the smile forming on her face, lasting, living, the joy of life returning. And then, after a minute she felt it vanish, flutter off of her like butterflies, off to migrate to other faces, to lift the days of others. Yesterday, Riley had asked her to stop by her house on the weekend, where her friends would be playing before a hockey game to which the tall girl was invited to witness. An idea formed in her head, her avatar in the current UHC stopping in place as she thought about it hard whilst her teammates waltzed about, preparing their equipment. She thought to herself, her thoughts echoing within her Headquarters as she spoke directly to the part of her that suggested the crazy idea.

 _"_ _Are you sure?"_ Alice asked her Sadness, who turned to the part of the Screen that indicated that Alice was directly interacting with them, which showed a blue visualizer. The blue Emotion went to Joy's usual part of the console, where a yellow light flashed on and off at regular, one second intervals, and pushed the crank halfway, letting Alice know her answer.

"It may help to have others know how you look; give them a face to associate the name and know who their helping with their support," she explained as the other Emotions opened a portal to the City on their third trip to there in search of Joy, lights flickering on and off in their respective colors and terminals as they entered, leaving the blue Emotion alone once more.

 _"_ _Let's ask the others to see if they're okay with this,"_ Alice reasoned before pressing the chat button on her game and inquiring about her plan and the Wonderland Kids' opinions. Within a moment, several responses came from all the players, all saying the following:

 _Bloody crazy, my boy_. HatterofMadness replied before being blown up by a TNT trap and receiving a bunch of GGs from the others. _Go for it!_

"Might be good for ya," Jabberwok said from behind her avatar, handing her a set of armor before turning to Jub-Jub, who wrote down an action command that made the chat say _Jub-Jub shrugged._

 _Have at it!_ Both Tweedles said in unison before one shot the other down after an epic archery dual, despite the two being on the same team.

 _Make sure you do it in WK fashion, 'kay dear?_ D0rmm0us chatted as she sneaked close by, unwittingly setting off one of Jabberwok's traps. She screamed a loud set of profane words as she fell to her doom and blew up by the TNT that used to support the gravel she was on.

 _Just make sure you're not late for bed by the time you finish, Sane._ WRabbit said as he looked down the hole where D0rmm0us used to be. _Also, aren't the Twins on the same team, Hatter?_

 _GO FOR IT!_ Bndrstch wrote in character, looking from a distance as his remaining teammate walked around the trap-surrounded base.

 _If the Mad Ones don't like it, OFF WITH THEIR TRAITOROUS HEADS! Otherwise, do it, Sweetie._ RoseRedQ replied from the End, being the only surviving member of her team and thus the only one still in the game, despite the option to spectate. She was then utterly massacred by several Endermen she saw soon after the stream of responses ended.

With every response, Alice felt her heart rate rise in anticipation and her happiness slowly returning. Even though she didn't yet think of them as her friends, the Wonderland Kids were very close in obtaining that status. If only she could meet them in person, maybe then they could be friends. Unfortunately, her depressive nature washed the joy of the sincere and slightly helpful responses a lot quicker than the earlier one and her neutral expression solidified with a vengeance.

 _Thanks, everyone,_ she replied to those who answered her just as those who died left the game or changed gamemodes. She then went inside her mind for a moment, appearing behind the one occupant of Headquarters and hugging her with a large, genuine smile on her imagined face. "And thank you, Sadness, for making others care."

"You're welcome," Alice's Sadness responded as Alice left the Mind World and focused on the game, the girl's avatar pulling a switch that triggered a pitfall trap that ended WRabbit's virtual life. As her opponent's screams filled her ears, Alice turned to her teammates, who had finished equipping their enchanted armor, and checked how many players were left.

"This is gonna be the shortest we've done," she said as she selected her axe and stood behind Jabberwok and Jub-Jub, who nodded in agreement before the former built a bridge outside.

-3-

Within the City, the Alternate Mind World, a yellow-skinned Emotion ran as fast as she could from her persistent pursuers. She, in her dark green vest with lime lining and blue fireworks design and bright green dress with similar design, leapt from window to window, ran across streets and through darkened alleys, dove into various crevasses large enough for only her figure to pass and even changed the layout of the gray and gloomy place in great and successful attempts to outrun the green, purple and red Emotions that constantly chased after her glowing and flame-lit form. The constant chase was how she passed her nights; during the day, she prepared for her endgame, prepared for the event that would change the way Alice's mind worked, at least until it was time for her re****

As night once more turned to day, Joy looked from her high perch atop a water tower, staring straight at Anger's bald and currently more human-like head, which rested atop a short, thick, human-like body dressed in a comfortably sized and shaped black dress with black laces and a red trim, as the red Emotion rode atop a transformed Fear, who took the of a giant purple salamander as they searched for the Yellow observer for the third time in the week. Instead of returning to Headquarters with the coming of day, as in the previous searches, *e**a*r saw the pair head further away from the center of the City, away from Personality Square and the Garden of Emotion, and continue into the day as if the sun hadn't risen. The action worried her, as she needed the time they would take from her to finish what she started.

D*sp*i* looked towards the gargantuan Tree of Emotion, at the very center of the garden, as if per routine and manifested two pairs of large, dragon-like wings. The faded Emotion breathed heavily, keeping track of her pursuers as they shambled away from her, every step punctuated by the blue flame at her heart receiving small brushes of air, each one weaker than the last. As soon as the flame calmed, she leapt off of her perch and began her way to the Square.

-3-

Alice gulped down half a glass of water in one go, her breath ragged and her face stained with fresh tears. She looked at her hosts, into their brown eyes and into their sympathetic minds, waiting for their response with patience and a solemn face. As soon as they had asked her to tell them her pain, she recalled every moment of the most hurtful memories in her life.

She told them of the fire that consumed her mother, how it began in her room and rapidly spread across the two stories of her home without any accelerant, how her mother grabbed her in the blaze and, in the face of an inferno that formed before the front door, was forced to throw her out to safety. She told them of her uncle, who died on an emergency trip to Minnesota; how, just as his plane was landing, an engine failure caused it to crash on the runway and a fuel leak caused by the impact and some exposed, live wiring caused it to explode before anyone could be saved. Lastly, she told them of her friends, of how they had planned to see the Boston marathon, flew all the way there, had fun, performed and all the mundane stuff friends do.

She told them of each friend she had; the energetic Denzel, who was the group's self-appointed leader, the quiet and optimistic Delilah, who always found ways out of problems, like difficult math equations, with a dash of sunshine, the shy and calm Markus, who was always working with his drums and had taught Alice how to play them, the mellow yet quick Samantha, who had a crush on Alice and would always be the first to defend her friends, and the always worrying Timothy, who somehow always had a look of fear despite the calmest of situations. She told them of the games they played as they waited for the day of the marathon, of the dances they performed to "Iridescent", "Diary of Jane" and "Human Race", of the conversation they had, not knowing it would be their last. Each word brought about tear after tear as she simply let go of all control, her only thought being simply to have someone know her story. She finally broke down as she told them about the bombing, the explosion that took her friends, yet failed to take her, despite how close she was to the blast.

Now, as she waited for their responses, within her mind, her Joy watched as the sad Memories returned to their places, within the many buildings surrounding him in nearly every direction. The green-dressed Emotion walked through a busy area of the City, every building that didn't housed memories serving as space for the various other functions of Alice's mind, or, at least, an alternate representation of said functions. He stopped by a certain building, where words and other figments came and went at rapid random, Language Processing, where Alice stored her understanding of words and their concepts.

Out of the tall building, a certain word crashed straight into Joy, dissipating into nothing and re-integrating itself behind him. This word, Descent, continued its blind run toward the sweeping line that was Abstract Thought, followed closely by the word Spiral. Joy watched as the words turned the corner, then looked to the roof of the building they came from. Here, the next step of his plan would be performed.

Inside the Default Mind World, Alice's other Emotions sat on their seats, each one colored in their opposite color and adjusted for their differing heights within the semi-circle of their console. Sadness sat in the middle, her seat contrasting shades yellow to her many blues. To her left sat Anger, who seethed in her Cyan seat at failing to even see Joy in their last search, paying no mind to the Outside. At the left extreme sat Fear, whose green chair somehow featured a lantern decal at its back. Opposite to him sat Disgust, whose violet chair was covered in flowers of Alice's favorite species in colors not usually seen in nature. The four of them sat in silence, Disgust and Fear being incapable of anything other than stare at Joy's empty and white seat, to Sadness right, in sorrow and near despair.

On the other side of the table, a certain yellow Emotion didn't felt as alive and happy as usual. In fact, Jill's Joy felt horrible, her energy drained away by every word heard. She looked towards the wall to her right, a straight row of fresh, sad memories burning their contents into her mind. She turned back toward the girl that caused the creation of such bitterly sad memories and couldn't help but let a tear fall off her cheek. To her left, Jill's Sadness and Anger pressed a set of buttons, making Jill the first to respond to the many horrible tales she heard.

"H-how have you managed t-to…?" Jill started, choking on the last few words. Alice looked straight at her, her red and blue eyes more expressive than usual and filled with a new wave of tears. Through eye contact, the brunette received her answer; Alice only pushed through until now by the desire to not die by her own hands. The young, tall girl had lived alone for the past three years, her sorrow growing into a deep depression as the memories repeated themselves with little to no mutation. She had only avoided succumbing to despair until recently, just before she received help by chance.

"Oh, dear," Jill gasped as it hit her, the girl before her had contemplated death on the day Riley met her, only stopping when she noticed the young blonde who would become her friend. And nearly every second the girl lived after that was most likely in worry for her new friend's life, every possible scenario playing with Alice's mind in twisted ways each night before barely being dismissed. Jill looked at her hands, crestfallen and brought to tears herself. With nary a thought, she extended them towards her guest, grabbing hold of the long, delicate fingers of the sad, silver-haired girl.

Bill, who had watched the scene unfold without interruption, mimicked his wife's actions, placing a hand atop of theirs. Within his mind, practically every entity across the Mind World was in tears, those in Headquarters more than anyone. Yet, they maintained composure, they looked at the unfairness of the life of the girl they were comforting, and they kept on. They all knew that the tears had to wait; there was someone in need of help, someone who barely had anyone that could help. They understood the pain, even if they never lived through similar circumstances themselves.

The three beings at the table stayed there in silence for several minutes, neither one of them capable of doing anything unrelated to sorrow. The Andersens had trouble coming up with any way to help their guest, while Alice had trouble closing the floodgates a second time. Tear after tear fell from her eyes nonstop, each one stinging her eyes more than the last, each one filled with denser sadness than the last. As the dripping of tears became a torrent, the pale girl failed to notice two bodies wrapping around her in a quiet, quivering embrace, a third body adding itself sometime later, nearly unnoticed by anyone.

Slightly startled, Bill turned his head toward the owner of the new weight, finding his fourteen year old daughter, having returned from school, tucked right beside Alice and whispering soothing words into the girl's ear. The act calmed the sobs of the larger girl and allowed her to rein in her flowing tears, a small smile fighting for life on the girl's tearstained face. By the living room, two young onlookers watched in silence as the family of three hugged the pale girl out of her sorrow, one wearing a gray jacket and black beanie over his large, brown, curly mane and the other wearing a solid blue sweater and denim skirt, her hair dyed the same shade of blue as her sweater. They both wore small smiles on their faces, smiles borne of the sad, yet heartwarming scene before them.

-3-

Joy felt it, a tug, a pull; she felt something calling to her. Was it Alice? Was it Pain? Was it all in her head?

 _No_ , De*pa*r thought as she finished the last adjustment of the day, _this was definitely something._ She looked around, her every instinct telling her that she had so little time before the others came back to look for her. Not that it mattered. She was nearly done with her preparations, anyway.

Taking a look to the sky, Joy waited as Alice fell to sleep, the clouds covering the City letting in the light of Lucidity's perpetual twilight, showing that tonight the silver-haired girl was Lucid Dreaming for the first time since Uncle Gozal's death. Perfect. Exactly what Joy needed to sneak into Headquarters for the last preparation.

D*spair did not know what allowed Alice enough happiness to Lucid Dream or call to her, but she did not care; she knew such happiness wouldn't last, not yet. It would take months, if not years for happiness to thrive in Alice's mind, and the Faded Emotion did not have that much time, especially as the blue Flame at her heart consumed her essence with each passing day.

Once more, the Faded Emotion felt it, the tug at her being, the call back "home." She disliked the feeling. She didn't need the feeling, not when she was nearly done. Turning to an old, nearly forgotten building in Alice's mind, one that would've granted Alice an increase in curiosity had the others not feared its Core, the Faded Emotion thought back to the last thing she said to the others when they thought they'd had her:

"There is no Joy,…"

-3-

"…only Despair!"

Those strange words echoed into Headquarters as the image of another Headquarters was suddenly replaced by a red cloud of some sort and the feeling of falling, the Emotions of a certain blonde girl holding on for dear life as the weightlessness affected even them. Swirls of black and green surrounded the girl as she reached terminal velocity and surpassed it. Physics was lost, the horrid dream the Emotions thought they were each having made itself even more frightening.

In the end, Riley Andersen was unable to tell when she stopped falling and when she awoke to a yellow-skinned, dark green wearing being in the middle of a glum gray city.


	3. Delusion: The Dream that's not a Dream

Upon returning to her home, Riley found a scene she definitely did not expect: her parents embracing her newest friend in support and sympathy. At first, the blonde was confused, then, she was relieved at finding out Alice was still alive and hadn't…

Riley promptly shot that train of thought down, mentally slapping herself for having thought Alice would do that for the fifth time that day. Quietly, she approached the three by the table, feeling one last thing before sneaking her way into the embrace, heartwarming sympathy. As she placed herself between her father and her friend, Riley heard her friends Jordan and Samantha enter the house, the two teenagers waiting by the living room in silence as the Andersens allowed Alice to cry out her every sorrow under them.

"It's alright," Riley whispered soothingly into the pale girl's ear, "everyone here is ready and willing to support you. Just cry it all out. I know the path ahead of you is long and winding, and I'm ready to follow you through it." She listened as the much larger girl slowly quieted down, the heavy, quivering sobs becoming gentler and softer until they were merely sniffles. One by one, the Andersens broke off from the embrace, giving Alice enough space to collect herself and properly look at her one friend.

Riley saw Alice's small, barely fighting smile gain strength and survive through the ongoing onslaught of memories that no doubt still recalled themselves within the girl's silver head. The smile was pained, but genuine and filled with appreciation for the sympathy given to her, and the tears that Riley saw fall out of Alice's eyes now contained a bit of joy. They were making progress, Riley knew of that, and it seemed as though Alice may recover soon. How soon, however, was still unknown. It could be months, maybe even a year or two; Riley just knew that her friend would be better sooner now than ever before.

After the scene played through and Alice returned to her usual expression of seeming emotionlessness, Riley introduced the tall girl to her friends, who she felt may be able to help even further. Appreciating the kindness she felt from the two presented to her, Alice silently contemplated accepting their friendship, the smile from before sneaking by her expressionless mask. That afternoon was then passed much quieter than usual in the Andersen household, with everyone learning about the quiet girl who sat by the far wall.

At one point, the fact that Alice was, in fact, homeless came up by accident, the room falling quiet as fast as the surprise kicked in. All eyes uncomfortably turned to the pale girl, causing her to shrink slightly, enough to be at eye level with Bill.

-3-

Two girls and a boy walked down an inclined sidewalk on their way to a blue house, several black and blue bags hanging off of their shoulders as the shorter pair talked about the weirdness of the past two days. The each walked slowly, for behind them the father of one of the girls carried a cooler filled with dry foodstuff. Needless to say, that Sunday morning was a really bad day for the car to be having a flat on both a wheel and its replacement.

Riley, Alice and Jordan stopped a block before the Andersen house, each one of them wearing smiles of varying sizes as they chatted about random topics, Alice unsurprisingly keeping to herself more than the others. All three of them wore hoodies, Riley's being the only one that was not black, but, instead, yellow, and they each wore dark colored pants, Alice's pants being the only pair not made of denim. They all waited for Mr. Andersen to get close enough to continue their way to the blue house.

"So, Alice," Riley said, thinking of something that had her confused for a bit, "how'd you manage to live in that building for so long without being noticed?" The question left Alice just as confused; by all accounts, someone should've noticed a seventy-seven inch tall, ghostlike woman enter and leave the building on a regular basis a long time ago. After giving the numbers some thought, the pale girl couldn't help but shrug and walk the rest of the way to what would be her new home in silent thought.

-3-

"Are you sure you don't want to wait until we clear enough space for another bed?" Jill asked Alice as the girl prepared herself for bedtime on Riley's bedroom floor. The only response she received was a tired look that somehow transmitted the answer to her. "Alright, but if you need anything, don't be afraid to ask, okay?" To that she received a nod, and she turned to leave for her own bed. Turning the light off as she shut the door, Jill whispered, "Goodnight, you two," and left the pale girl and Riley in darkness.

The two looked at each other, the blonde asking herself just one question as she stared at Alice's long, slender yet massive physique:

 _Why is she about to sleep covered only by such a small blanket?_

If one were to look inside Riley's head, they would find her emotions blushing furiously at the other teenager's naked frame, each wondering if that's how their nights were going to be from then on. If anything, they counted themselves lucky Riley hadn't yet showed a liking to… well, anyone, really. They were, after all, still in puberty, having been in the stage for the past two and a half years. The two currently manning the console were Fear and Disgust, both of them now wondering when those hormonal changes will occur, as they would most likely bring about effects that may change them in more ways than one, as noted by Sadness.

Alice, on the other hand, was wondering if what she was feeling was real, every Emotion in her own Headquarters questioning if the last few days had actually happened, more out of exhaustion from chasing down Joy than out of how fantastical things seemed, relatively speaking. They had a new home, offered to them by her only true friend. The silver-haired girl may even be adopted into the family, though she kept her expectations low as to not be hurt if it wasn't the case. Alice's console, which in years before would sometimes turn ash gray when her depression hit hard, was now nearly snow white from the amount of input it received from everyone there, although the little light that allowed for Joy's terminal to be operated as if Joy were there was barely lighting up, reminding them that looked at it like time was running short.

Despite the worry and the excitement, everyone was too tired to go and look for Joy tonight, mostly because of the sleepless week for most of them, but also because of Alice's own tiredness. As Alice went to sleep, waving to Riley as she pulled herself into a fetal position, Fear, Anger and Sadness got off their chairs, the colors of which reset to white, and walked to their living space, waving goodnight to Disgust as the white-dressed Emotion prepared herself some tea and food to get through the first few dreams, unless Alice decided to Lucid Dream, which the green Emotion found unlikely. One could forgive her stunned surprise when she saw the sky stop at dusk rather than turn dark like usual.

Back in Riley's head, as the girl finally looked elsewhere, the blonde's Emotions all celebrated the wonderful day they had and what little progress they've managed to make on Alice's recovery, all while slowly forgetting about the recent embarrassing moments before sleep. Well, Joy, Anger, Disgust and Sadness forgot about it. Fear was thinking about how those last few memories would play in Riley's dreams, as he had Dream Duty that night. As the others went to bed, Fear pulled a chair to the console, freshly made tea in hand, and waited for the dream to start.

That's when things went wrong.

Just before any image or sound could come out of the console, the sound of a phone rang from the other side of the ramp to the living space, causing Fear to go pick it up and miss the image of a dark cyan and gray room illuminated by a screen that displayed a certain silver-haired girl holding a chisel in a garden containing three large blocks of marble. The girl was dressed in a black and white striped dress with a simple apron and calmly held the chisel as she chatted with someone off screen. Below and before the screen was a large console, filled with various buttons, levers and even a crank. It was in the shape of a semi-circle, one with a small radius and curving away from the screen, and had five white chairs within its perimeter.

The image played on Riley's Mind's Eye while Fear picked up the phone, the wall of the ramp obscuring his view of the screen. When the purple Emotion put the phone by where his ear would be, he heard a panicked, female voice practically scream into his poor head.

"Hello," the voice yelled in a hurry, "is this Headquarters?"

"Yes, ow," Fear replied, taking the phone away from his head and rubbing where it was, "this is Headquarters, you have Fear."

"Great!" the voice screamed in relief. "Fear, this is Director Patricia, from Dream Productions. We have a bit of a problem."

"What kind of problem?" the thin emotion asked as he took the phone with him to the console, not paying attention to the screen. On the other side of the screen, within "dream" of the dark control room, Riley found herself confused and curious, running on the presence of her Emotions rather than their input, not that she knew that. She looked around, taking in the strange décor on the walls; from caterpillars and rabbits running along a long grooves that forked and curved all along the cyan walls, to the odd flowers in several corners, to the strangely colored seats and chairs close to the semi-circular console, to the projector that hung level with the screen, despite its base being two stories above the blonde.

As Riley examined the room, she almost missed a green being, whose height barely reached above her navel, walk passed her without acknowledging her. The being, dressed in white and hair turning silver at the roots, sat down on the middle chair, which turned purple and began to grow flowers of various kinds and colors. She set down a bowl of flakes and took several sips of something as the girl on the screen approached a marble block and as Riley approached from behind. It was only now that Riley's Fear noticed what has happening.

After being informed of that the sky in Riley's mind was somewhere between awake and asleep, Fear's eyes focused on the screen. Without needing time to think, he recognized the image beyond the screen as a Headquarters. Whose, he didn't care; he just knew that what he was watching was supposed to be impossible. How Riley got there, how she was dreaming that horrifying image was something Fear cared about more than anything aside from getting her out of there.

Slamming his hands onto the "Nightmare! Wake up!" button, Fear hoped beyond hope Riley would wake from the dream. However, instead of suddenly seeing the ceiling of her room, Riley stayed in the Headquarters within the screen, approaching what seemed to be someone else's Disgust. Aside from the unresponsiveness of his host, Fear received something so horrible from the console, he had a sudden flashback of the first few days in San Francisco, the color black.

It appeared only for a second, but that second alone told Fear something was oh so very wrong. Without giving anything much thought, Fear ran upstairs and quickly called the others with wild abandon. Meanwhile, Riley tapped the shoulder of the white-dressed figure, startling the fairy-like being as she took a bite of her meal. The green figure turned to look at the young blonde, eyes widening as she figured out who she was staring at. If it were in the nature of the green woman to scream, she surely would've at that very moment.

Riley and Disgust stared into each other's eyes, neither one of them knowing what to do next and neither one of them darning to look away. Somehow, the girl on the screen remarked about losing her audience, losing interest in the fact not long after. Before the girl turned, Riley spared a glance at the screen, recognizing Alice's left eye before turning back to the small, green being before her. Panic now settled into Disgust's head, her eyes somehow larger than Sadness' glasses and her mouth agape. If there was anything wrong with the entire thing, it was the fact that someone other than a resident of the mind was in Headquarters.

"Uh," Riley tried to start a conversation, deciding to erode the awkwardness of the scene and try to calm the panicking being, "hey, there?" Unfortunately, Disgust was, at the moment, giving Fear a run for his money, as she jumped onto the console, pressing down a considerable amount of buttons and levers, fell behind it and ran around the thing in a beeline upstairs, finally releasing a loud shriek that reached in the hundred decibel range. The scream somehow caused Alice, from the other side of the screen, to turn back around, despite the lack of a microphone anywhere in the room.

Confused more than ever before, Riley turned to a window on the second floor, hearing a frantic conversation that somehow matched one that was currently happening inside her mind, unbeknownst to the teenager. For some reason, Riley felt as if the conversation upstairs was missing a voice, as if someone other than the strange green girl that ran away from her wasn't there. Feeling like she should at least go up there to dissuade any panicked actions that may occur, Riley began following the being.

That is, until she saw five lines of light leading to several floating structures outside and curiosity got the better of her. Everyone within the blonde's Headquarters practically flipped the moment the girl laid eyes onto the Core Memory Module and followed the lines back and forth between it and the Personality Islands, stepping ever closer to the somehow still un-replaced window. When she reached the aperture, Riley looked at every floating Island connected to where she was via the light. From left to right, she took note of every feature of each Island and managed to match them with the various aspects of Alice's personality.

The first island was obvious, everything about it was in flames; intense flames, made of woe and fueled by sorrow, consuming structures of wood, metal and brick. Loss, Riley figured it was called, although she didn't know the reason why. The one beside it, much smaller than it, contained just a statue resembling her and her tall friend surrounded by the collapsed bases of five other statues within a small flower patch. Friendship came to mind, although Riley felt the name incomplete; Cherished Friendship sounded whole to her and a whole lot better. Beside it was an Island filled with various instruments Alice once told her she played whenever she got the feeling, a drum set, an accordion and a piano standing tall. Music fit this Island.

Although beside Music Island there was empty space, the Island beside the emptiness contained something Riley did not expect, game elements, random game elements. The blonde figured that Alice may have once found solace in gaming, and so she felt the name Gaming fit the out of place Island. The fifth Island, the absolute smallest Island, one that seemed to be in a stagnant collapse, contained something that horrified Riley, a noose hanging on a lonely tree. At that moment, everyone in Riley's mind froze in place; every fiber of Riley Andersen's being turning colder than ice as her heart sank into the deepest crevasse in existence.

Suicide. The word echoed in the young girl's mind, her brain recalling her thoughts from days before when she felt worry over Alice's state of being upon not seeing her. Riley took several steps back as the shock of the Island's presence took over, the console in her Headquarters actually responding to Fear and Sadness' touch momentarily. Riley's mind flickered between Awake and Lucid for as long as the horrid feeling lasted before the sound of a glass orb hitting the ground finally settled it back to Lucid, replacing the bad shock with a somewhat better one.

Tearing her view from the accursed Island, Riley saw a rather large, brightly glowing yellow orb rolling across the ground from a pedestal toward an area on the ground where the light lines originated from, within it an image played of a girl in an attic morphing into a strange, white furred, long eared creature with four relatively large, draconic wings draping themselves around her small frame, a look of wonder and fascination plastered all over the transforming five year old's face, with a glint of the feeling of finding where one belonged shining in the girl's eyes. Immediately, Riley ran up to the orb and picked it up, her mind somehow recognizing the girl as a younger Alice. She turned to the pedestal where the orb fell from, finding a note on it that said:

"Joy, please stop placing Wonder Island's Core Memory into the Module. We are NOT the creature we DIDN'T turn into.

Sincerely, Fear."

Turning to the source of the lines of light, Riley noticed five glowing orbs of various colors positioned around a center, where a button was, a space large enough for another orb between a pure blue orb and a blue, yellow and purple one. Slowly, the curious teenager approached the button as she heard noise emanating from the orb she held. In words so clear, yet so distant, Riley heard the girl in the orb wonder what other things in the world weren't as they seemed before the image looped to its beginning, when the young pale girl played with mysterious objects haphazardly placed about. As she got to the "Module," Riley wondered just what placing the strange, fascinating orb in it would do to Alice in this strange place, asking herself if it'll fill the pale being with intense curiosity and wonder, as well as help her recover just as she pressed the button in the middle with her bare foot, causing the thing on the ground to rise up and present the empty space to her.

So distracted with her thoughts and curiosity was Riley that she failed to notice a blue entity sneak up on her and touch the orb, adding blue swirls of sadness onto its surface just as Riley placed it in the slot. As the Module accepted the orb, it receded into the floor and produced a line of light between Music Island's and Gaming Island's, an Island containing three statues within a large garden materializing between the mentioned ones. The closest statue, Riley noticed, greatly resembled Alice, dressed in a flowing dress and a hooded vest and embracing the second statue, one resembling an older version of what younger Alice turned into. The two statues were themselves embraced by a slightly larger one, this one resembling Riley more than anyone, despite being faceless and having angelic wings contrasting the second statue's draconic ones.

Upon examining the Island, Riley found the name "Wonder Island" to be a bit mismatching and out of place and felt Acceptance Island to be more fitting. Although she wondered what caused the Island to appear like that, and what caused the orb to change color, Riley pushed those thoughts away when she noticed a hand pat her back. Turning around, the young blonde saw a blue figure wearing a dark blue nightgown that looked several sizes too big despite the figure's roundness. This figure was a few inches shorter than the last, being level with Riley's hips, and seemed to be shaped like an upside-down tear with blue and silver hair and large, round glasses. Her hair parted from above her left eye and flowed beside her right, some strands going under the glasses rather than over.

After staring at the blue creature for a small while, Riley looked down at the Module, at the modified orb she had placed just a moment ago before snapping straight back at the sound of scraping wood. Before her stood a plain oak table that wasn't even in the room earlier, the blue entity seated at the far end, reading a binder titled "Long Term Memory Retrieval, Volume 47." Without looking, the blue entity pointed to a seat beside Riley, silently urging her to take it. After complying, the teenager couldn't help but look at the upstairs window, where three pairs of nervous eyes stared back, a certain red pair attempting to burn her where she sat.

"For the longest time, we've grieved," the blue being said, startling the blonde out of her trance. Riley looked at her, at blue eyes that feigned interest in the binder and were actually unfocused. "First, we denied a truth we discovered by accident, the majority of us fearfully claiming it was a hallucination. The only ones to know it was not a hallucination were me and Joy, and that was because we've read in the Manuals that hallucinations are mostly caused by external factors or neurological discharges and misfires, the latter two usually occurring before sleep, during something called sleep paralysis. After that, we denied a bunch of other things. Then, we were just angry."

Riley looked at the screen behind the blue being, taking note at how Alice played with rough shapes made out of the marble. The sound of the being's voice drew her attention again.

"We were angry with the world, angry with the flames, we were even angry with ourselves. It felt horrible. We didn't like it, so we soon began bargaining. Most of our friends were made because of that. For some time, that made Alice happy, and so Joy could almost always be found at the console. And then, they died, and the worst is I'd just managed convince the others to let Joy put Wonder Island's Core Memory in its slot the night before."

The blue being set the binder down to reveal it to be filled with pictures of a certain yellow Emotion with blue hair and eyes, a bright blue glow surrounding their body in nearly every one of them. Riley looked at the many upside down images, taking note of how each one looked just a little bit less happy than the last as time progressed, until the last one came to view. In this last picture, the being known as Joy had no blue glow, no happy aura, not even a genuine smile. They just looked despondent, the smile forced, like they were just trying to keep appearances, and their skin slightly faded.

Upon further inspection of the image, Riley noticed three hairpins keeping up the once naturally lifted tuff of hair, which in earlier images seemed to slowly lower at such a rate it was barely noticeable. She also noticed the tinges of blue by the depressed being's fingertips, although that could've been a manifestation of Alice's external appearance on them. After a while, the blue being before Riley continued.

"After that, everything spiraled downward faster than anything can hope to be, what with our uncle dying on the way back to Bloomington and everyone assuming we died too. That is, until we went to school the next month after crying out of begging for his return. That's when we entered depression, but for the sake of Joy, we agreed to use the term "really sad time." Until recently, we've been like that, the console barely reacting to Joy for some time before the both of them gave up on making Alice happy. Alice was just too far gone for happiness, and soon, she would've been too far gone for any of us to give input."

The blue being closed the binder, keeping a finger between the two pages as she continued explaining Alice's grieving process, "Until you arrive, that is." She reopened the binder to show the same two pages changed to now show pictures of Riley and Alice, each one gradually happier than the last, but still within the range of sorrow. There was a picture for every day they'd met in the last month, all the way up until last Friday, when they met at Riley's house in a warm embrace. "You are currently helping us into acceptance; you're the key to Alice's Joy. You're the one who set her on the path to recovery, the first person she ever truly gave her broken heart to. And for that, I'd like to thank you."

"And from whom am I accepting this gratitude?" Riley asked, already knowing the blue being's name. In response, the blue entity simply closed and reopened the binder with its proper content before saying:

"Sadness, Alice Reena's Sadness." Those words confirmed for Riley where she was, inside Alice's head. Whether or not this was real was a different matter for the girl, although her emotions could tell that it was. Within the young blonde's head, Riley's emotions had calmed down with how things weren't blowing in their host's face, nervous glances still being shared amongst themselves as they tried to reclaim control over the unresponsive console. Riley was becoming aware of how things worked, even if she's yet to get the full picture.

Back outside, the young blonde and the blue, ironically smiling emotion stared at each other in silence, the dream behind the latter having become mute to their ears. Slowly, things clicked in Riley's head; the place where she sat, the beings she had met there, they give Alice feeling, guide her actions in the subtle ways their presence implied, and the blonde was sure that Alice barely felt them at all recently, given the implications Sadness gave her. It also clicked to her the fact the she might have a similar place in her own mind, but she pushed the thought aside for the moment, finding among her thoughts something more important.

"Why am I here?" Riley asked, her confusion from earlier returning. If she was in someone else's mind, how did she get there and why? Suddenly, Riley got the feeling that she shouldn't be there, that if she was there, her own body was left mindless, probably comatose or worse, given her new view of things, under someone else's control. That idea would've sounded insane to her before, but, she argued, so would being where she was.

After a long while, in which silence ruled, Sadness responded. Or, she would've, had a red portal not open right where Riley sat, taking the girl away from Headquarters and into the City.

-3-

Despair stepped out of a courthouse, the Faded Emotion having arrived there by virtue of being too close to the Mind Manuals when opening a blue portal. She took a look around, the streets barren of even random thoughts, a sign that Alice was focused on something with such intensity nothing could break her concentration. The Faded Emotion nearly smiled, walking into the street with a heavy gait and looking at the sky with an uneasy feeling in her chest. The flame flickered lightly, still the same size as when she left.

After walking a few blocks north, Despair saw a red portal open high above the Tree of Emotion, a single silhouette falling out of it. Seconds later, a beam of light broke through the dense cloud cover and expanded, a crystalline wall forming at the edge of the rays. Despair was surprised at the spectacle and picked up her pace, turning into a boy half a block into the run to Personality Square.

-3-

Riley fell. She felt the wind rush by her as the green of grass, the brown of a tree and the gray of clouds meshed together in a blurry soup of sensory input. She felt the leaves of the tree painfully scratch at her skin as she fell faster and faster. She felt the weightlessness her ever increasing velocity provided. With a splash of blue added into the mix, she felt the cool of a small spring envelop her, deaccelerating her faster than stone, yet not causing any damage. Finally, she felt nauseated, her head feeling as if a marching band were playing as loudly as they could.

After gathering her senses, Riley slowly stepped out of the spring and took a look at her surroundings. All around her were an archipelago of floating islands in an endless yellow-white sky, each one filled with plants and flowers of one color and many shades, a small, endless stream of clear water falling off of each island into a murky black ocean. On one of the five islands, one covered in golden flowers, stood a single bush of blueberries that seemed to have caught on blue fire, a fire that produced no heat, instead feeling cold to the blonde even from her distant position.

In the middle of the archipelago, where she stood, lived a giant tree containing a spectrum of fruits of different shapes and sizes, from the lower-most branches to the very top of the ancient plant. Each fruit shimmered with a pleasant light, save for the yellow ones, which appeared to be rotting rapidly and secreting a grayish blue liquid that burned at their skin. The only exception to the decay was a fruit that had a reflective quality to it, its feint glow overtaken by the glow of the others. Around the tree were various orbs that replayed scenes from someone's past, most likely Alice's, Riley figured.

With great curiosity, Riley picked a random blue and yellow orb from beside the spring, the scene within replacing the world around her. In a few seconds, the blonde found herself inside a living room decorated in white and blue party streamers. In front of the teen was a large table littered with candy and cupcakes, a single one marked by a candle in the shape of a five placed on a small platform next to a picture of a milky white girl wearing a black and yellow dress. Running around the room were children of various age, some running through the blonde as if she weren't there, and to the right of the table stood someone Riley thought she would never see again, someone that triggered her deepest, darkest fear.

Before the girl stood a clown of long blue hair that sprouted and curled from the sides of his head, the top of which was bald and white from oily makeup that covered the rest of his head, he wore a red top with closed bell sleeves, white gloves covering his hands as he made a green balloon horse. From below his waist, the clown wore blue polka dotted pants far larger than any sane man should wear and beneath them were large red and yellow shoes that looked as if they came out of a distorted cartoon. Even his face looked horrifying in Riley's eyes, what with the large red smile and nose under those soul stealing eyes.

The moment Riley saw Jangles turn in her direction, she and every single entity outside of her Subconscious screamed so loud the noise of the ongoing party was mute in comparison. She stayed screaming until she felt her lungs devoid of air, breathed in once and continued screaming until the horrid clown turned away from her in search of a child who would want the balloon in his hands. She back away from the table, from the being her nightmares were made of, until she passed through a rather glum looking girl in a blue dress and a blue ribbon on her ivory and silver head. The girl, no older than five despite her tallness, walked up to the clown and sat beside him, giving the wall opposite to her a thousand-yard stare as she remembered what had happened almost a year ago, near midnight one 22nd of January.

Alice looked at the lime walls of her house, her red and blue eyes unfocused as the events of last year's fire replayed endlessly in her head. She took no notice to the children her uncle had invited in an attempt to give her friends to alleviate her pain with, nor did she wanted to be there, in a world that had taken away so much to someone so young. Where she sat was her thinking space, the one spot in the house anyone could find her between one and seven, for all she did to pass the time was either think of how things would be if her mother were still alive or think of how things would be if their roles were reversed. She figured a long time ago that her mother would've grieved, but carried on due to her much greater experience.

So unfocused and uncaring in the worlds affairs and so focused in her own was the pale girl, who could've been mistaken for a ghost with how she carried herself, that she failed to notice the confused and worried look from the clown above her. Even the touch of Jangles' glove was missed by the birthday girl as she began reciting Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky to herself in quiet tones, thinking herself to be the one who slew it. The only thing that brought the child out of her trance was the loud, cartoonish, forced voice of the clown who she knew did not like being a clown.

"Is something wrong, little one?" Jangles asked the girl who was just a head shorter than him, pity and worry written on his features. The kindness and sympathy in the words pulled the young Alice out of her nonsensical poem-filled trance by virtue of how much true emotion had been poured into them, the air around them becoming lukewarm and comforting despite the cold sadness in the girl's heart. Alice looked into the clown's eyes, trying to convey her emotions onto him, but wanting to be left in silence. In about three seconds, the pale girl opted to explain her demeanor to the adult.

"I'm just thinking of death and its unfairness," she explained in near monotone, looking down at her crossed feet, "of how it takes away one's meaning of life by taking away key people in one's life at the worst of times and leaves the world forever hollow in one's eyes."

"And what brought you these thoughts?" Jangles asked in his normal voice, noting the apparent seriousness of the girl's implications. "Who has death taken from you?"

"My mother," the young Alice replied solemnly and somberly, her eyes wet and unfocused once more. "Today marks the three-hundred-sixty-fifth day since her death, at eleven-thirty in the night." She turned to the clown, her face devoid of anything sans a quiet sorrow. Jangles, for his part, merely kneeled down to the girl's level, suddenly finding his legs weak. They sat there for half a minute, in the eyes of an onlooker from their future who just finds herself at a loss for words.

Here Riley stood, before a younger apparition of her new friend and roommate and one of her darkest fear, and the two memory-based figments were talking about the death of Alice's mother, on the girl's birthday party, no less. In the time they sat in silence, Riley noticed several things:

First, she and Alice shared birthdays.

Second, Alice's birthday may not be the best day of the year for her, given that her mom died just as the day was ending.

Finally, maybe it was time for her to talk to someone about her Coulrophobia, given that she just saw her tormentor in quite the bright light as portrayed by Alice's memories.

Once those thoughts ended, Riley observed as Jangles began to speak once more.

"So, you're the birthday girl?" The clown earned a small nod from the silver-haired girl, muttering something about not having to spend time asking that silly question until someone decided to actually answer. "Well, if this day carries such sad memories for you, why'd you let your uncle throw this party for you?" Alice looked at the man who barely stood a head taller than her with slight confusion, having figured the answer was obvious but reminding herself that everyone older than her was most likely much more experienced than her. Looking at her small hands, she gave him an answer

"Because he said I could make friends here, and that they could help me back to my feet."  
"I don't see you making any friend. Why is that?"

"My appearance scares them." Jangles was taken aback by the unexpected answer, having found the girl's milky skin to be mildly curious but nowhere near scary. He then noticed the girl's strange eyes and figured that they may be the reason for the children's fright. Her eyes were dual toned, the inside blue with the outside a sharp red, and seemed to be capable of projecting the girl's emotions with all their intensity; simply looking at them made Jangles feel sad, sadder than he would've felt with just hearing the girl's story. Suddenly, Jangles felt a small flame ignite in his chest, a slow burning anger rising within his being.

"Well," he began, his tone serious enough that some children actually stopped for a moment, "if that's the reason they don't want to be friends with ya, why bother with them. I bet if you look hard enough, you'll find someone who'd appreciate how you look and care about you enough to turn your weirdness into something magnificent!" He raised his arms exaggeratedly, letting himself slip back into his act as he stood up to continue his speech. "And when you find that someone, or those people, if you find more than one person, you may share your story with them and they may help you with true sympathy and friendship. For if no child here can see the person in need of companionship, of friends who can care for her," he lowered his voice to a small whisper, "why are they here for?"

"To have fun like little children want to," Alice replied to Jangles rhetorical question in a matter-of-factly tone.

"Eh, there's that, true," the clown noticed as parents and children in the room laughed at the spectacle, including Riley, who caught herself by surprise with an honest to goodness giggle at his antics. "Wow, kid, this conversation may've been short, but I completely forgot you're five."

"It happens sometimes."

"Really?" Jangles asked as he got back down. "Wouldn't have noticed, I'll give you that." He looked at a small bag of balloons, realizing that he should continue with his job and giving himself a chuckle at the reality that had occurred; an unexpectedly mature chat with a five-year old whose birthday he was hired to appear on and he was basically cutting work whilst having it. As he stood up once more, Jangles turned to the girl beside him and asked, "Say, kid…"

"Alice."

"Okay, Alice, what kind of balloon do you want?" Alice turned to the clown with a confused look in her eye, a sudden realization sprouting within them as she noticed the invited children gather around the clown at the prospect of balloon animals. As the world around the non-figment onlooker faded to white, Riley noticed Alice smile and stand up to make her request.

"Can you make me a mallet?" the figment asked as the world was replaced by the archipelago of floating islands as the memory in Riley's hand reset itself. The sky around the Islands brightened and pulsed rhythmically, subtle clouds of various dark shades forming from the horizon and reaching above the giant tree in the middle of things. Beside Riley was a large balloon mallet made mostly of blue and yellow balloons that had manifested as she dropped the memory. The blonde picked the mallet off the grass, noticing a strange feeling to its texture as she observed the ever brightening sky.

-3-

When Despair arrived at Personality Square, she several things that brought a calming sort of surprise to her. First, the Veil of Light that had fallen over the Garden showed an archipelago as large as the Garden was, even containing a Tree of Emotion at its center. Second, the Wonder Shop that had been left out of commission for so long that it had fallen apart now seemed to be back in business, new look, name and everything, now being the Acceptance Corner. Lastly, there was the body of a naked blonde girl made up of particles and mental energy lying unconscious by the edge of the Veil.

Approaching the girl, Despair pulled the jacket off a Random Figment that walked past her, dusting off the dirt from its yellow texture before covering her. It only took Despair one look at the girl's face to know who she was tending to; the way the blonde's hair draped over her right eye, the slight gap between her front teeth, the smile that seemed to naturally form. Despair's patient was none other than Riley Andersen, the girl who tried to lift Alice's spirits up for the past month.

The Faded Emotion wondered how the girl had manifested within Alice's Mind and arrived at the City, as well as what happened to her clothes. Surely her mind would've been clothed in the things she last wore, unless, of course, she feinted whilst exploring the City, which, in any case, was a good way for an intruder to get detected by Alice rather quickly. Taking a look at the dark clouds above, Despair could tell that her girl was still oblivious to the Andersen girl lying naked on the pavement of her mind.

Turning to the new Random Figments on the street, Despair thought to herself as she began collecting a set of clothes for Riley. As she picked a red shirt, she thought of why, if Alice always slept with the nothingness she was born with, the Emotions wore clothes when they slept or performed Dream Duty. The green wearing Emotion quickly made a mental note to ask Disgust or consult the Manuals about it if she ever had to make an emergency stop at Headquarters soon, a prospect she absolutely did not like. As she grabbed a pair of jeans, she thought of how Riley had entered Alice's Mind and the circumstances behind the intrusion. While she was no Fear, Despair speculated three possible reasons why, but decided to wait for Riley to wake up to continue thinking on them.

Just as she was about to pick some undergarments from some Figments that acted out some of Alice's most primal desires, the Faded Emotion heard Riley begin to stir from her slumber. Wasting little time, Despair grabbed what she could and, changing genders again, left the folded clothes beside the blonde girl and tended to her once more. The Faded Emotion made sure to carefully move debris from where the Veil of Light broke through the Mind World's Central Island and position the blonde as comfortably as he could, straightening her body, placing her head atop softer material and granting her some shade with his dimmed frame as her blue eyes slowly opened.

-3-

The first thing Riley's Joy noticed was that she was missing her dress, the cold feel of Headquarters' floor tickling the entirety of her particle-made frame, the second thing she felt was the immense weight of several unconscious bodies laid on top of her, every one of them as devoid of clothing as she was. Joy carefully and difficultly pulled herself from under the pile of Emotions, taking note of what Disgust would probably say if she were to wake up, and walked her way toward the console, across a room full of chaotically made and recalled memories. Looking at the monitor from her usual spot, the yellow Emotion noticed one last thing, Riley was stirring…

…WITHIN HEADQUARTERS!

RIGHT BEHIND HER!

Looking back toward the pile, Joy saw the blond girl slowly awake atop of Anger, her body made of the same colored particles as everyone else in the room and as devoid of clothing as everyone else. As if the night couldn't stop getting stranger and scarier, Riley's eyes opened to reveal empty voids of white light, a dense mist creeping out of them and dissipating inches away from whence it came. The light emitted by the girl's form hid away many distinguishable features below her face, where it dimmed considerably to show it without blinding others. All in all, she looked more like a ghost than her usual self.

Stepping off of the pile of Emotions, with her hair flowing as if under water or within microgravity, Riley approached her own Joy absentmindedly, each step both light and heavy as a dizziness took over. Closer and closer the blonde walked, a light green dress manifesting on her left arm as the screen beyond her destination turned to static and then to a whitish-yellow boy with grayish-blue hair moving chunks of pavement and concrete away to make space. His clothes consisted of a dark green vest and a light green dress that fell until his knees, similar to the one Riley placed on top of the console as a woolen sweater replaced it on her arm.

As clothes one by one were formed and left on the console, the being outside turned away from the screen, a blue fireball appearing in his open palm before being thrown at an unknown object, most likely a hydrant, given the sound of pressurized water pouring out after the quick explosion. A moment and a flicker of light later, a large hard-light bowl filled with water floated toward the boy and tipped slightly as the boy removed a yellow jacket from slightly below sight, its contents falling on exposed skin that, to Riley's understanding, shouldn't be there, as it felt as though the drops fell on her.

As the boy rinsed what impossibly appeared to be Riley's body, the blonde girl turned to the Emotion beside her, acknowledging Joy for the first time since she woke. The two stared at each other closely, the young teen taking in the blue-haired Emotion's features and similarities to the one in the pictures she saw earlier. Everything about the particle beings matched, their hair style and color, their skin, and their glow was the same. One look to the light green dress folded between two levers in the middle of the console suggested to Riley that even the dresses were the same. The differences only became apparent when one took change into the equation.

Turning back to the screen, Riley could tell with certainty who was on the other side as the rest of her Emotions stirred, Alice's Joy, faded and depressed. Nearly everything from the last image fit, the three hairpins, the missing glow, the faded color, the only things different were the vest he now wore and the flame on his chest, which flickered in bright blue as he worked on the body below him. Riley could feel the subtleness of his hands as he washed pieces of dirt and dust off of her just as a realization reached her.

Looking behind herself, the blonde girl saw a large Personality Island containing a statue resembling an event from a few years prior, her family's embrace after she admitted to missing Minnesota, as well as several objects and buildings resembling things she'd done with her family, including a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge and a board game. The mere presence of the Island gave Riley the last thing she needed to admit to herself where she was, her own Headquarters, similar, yet largely different to Alice's shape- and detail-wise. She took in the reddish-purple of the floor and walls, the many flower decals along the Short-Term Memory Shelves and the yellow, blue and purple memories predominantly lining the walls, about half of them mixed-colored.

"Hey," a voice called from the monitor, causing Riley and her awakening Emotions to turn to it, "are you alright?" The boy Riley came to know as Alice's Joy looked at her worriedly, his blue-gray hair falling into a lopped point kept by the hairpins as his mouth curled downward. The Faded Emotion was a bit more over Riley than earlier, the majority of his body parallel to hers as he reached for the girl's forehead. Riley approached the console, its large array of buttons and levers unnerving and confusing, before being tackled by her Fear, who, in his panic, failed to notice the lack of clothes on anyone.

Beyond the monitor, an echo of the screams within Riley's mind resounded off the buildings around the two, attracting several Subconscious Figments from many streets away. Several guttural howls could be heard eastward, telling the boy just what kind of danger was approaching. Despair turned to Riley's unmoving body, his voice speaking volumes of the fear within him. Within Riley's mind, Disgust, Anger, Joy and Sadness watched as Fear and their host practically wrestled in front of the console before the spindly Emotion noticed their naked predicament. Leaping off of Riley and behind the console, Fear let out a yell far higher in pitch than his normal voice suggested he could reach, the tone nearly reaching ultrasonic and causing cracks to form on the window behind everyone.

Looking up in confusion to where the purple Emotion went, Riley realized just why everyone she met was frightened, save for Alice's Sadness; the girl was, as of then, an anomaly in the natural order. Standing back up, the blonde looked sympathetically at her own Fear, quietly pointing to the vest and pants at the other side of the console before walking up to the middle of it and turning to the screen.

Seeing the relieved face of Alice's Joy, Riley awaited for some form of help, to return to the outside she perceived and hopefully figure out why she was within Alice's mind instead of her bed, by the window, in a relatively normal street of the loud, bustling city of San Francisco. As she waited, she wondered just why she and all of her Emotions awoke bare, in a heap and almost on the other side of Headquarters.

"You're wondering that too, right?" a small voice called from beside her. Riley turned to her right to find Sadness putting on her sweater, the blue Emotion finding it as easy to approach her host as Joy found her accordion huggable. They looked into each other's eyes for a few moments before Sadness continued. "We've all been wondering how all of the past hour happened, every one of us finding all of this experience terrifying, but not as much as we're supposed to." She looked to the screen, where Alice's Joy waited patiently cross-legged for the conversation to end. "All of this is supposed to be secret, in a cosmic sort of way. Neither world should interact with each other in any way, save for the input we Emotions give to our host."

She turned back to Riley. "At least, that's what the Manuals say."

"Well," Anger muttered while pulling the knot of his tie, "that entry's screwed." Beside him, partially obstructed by the console, Fear was busy trying to put on all of his clothes at once, jumbling up every once in a while before comically warping and spinning into a different tangle of limbs and cloth. It only took one tug from Anger, however, to somehow get his clothing into the proper assortment. "Will you cut that out!?" The firebrick loudly said before he began the mundane task of tying his shoes.

"And now that you've been to two Headquarters, and, thus, at least two Mind Worlds, things will be strange," Disgust added, straightening any wrinkle she found on her green dress. "Seriously, though, how did we get here?"

"I don't know," Fear nearly screamed, panic still in possession of his mind, "By all accounts, the very fact that we're talking to Riley should cause a paradox of some sort or an implosion of the space between us and her body or…"

"Nothing at all?" Joy and Riley both added at the same time, the yellow Emotion reaching for her own dress as the blonde teenager tapped her fingers on the whitish-red-violet console. Fear, for his part, barely acknowledged their input, adding the words to his ever growing list of potential happenings to current events as if they were his own.

After a few more additions to the list, the spindly Emotion suddenly stop, realized who had actually said that, looked at the two and nervously laughed, noticing that the thing they mentioned was actually correct and earning a giggle from the teen and a full on guffaw from Joy. Even the alert Emotion from the other side of the screen let out a soft laugh, one actually filled with joy rather than emptiness, but one that died soon after it was born.

"And I thought Fear's reaction to being naked was funny," screamed the yellow star as her laughter calmed a bit, her green dress already halfway on. She wiped the stray tear that leaked out of her blue eye before meeting the gaze of Sadness. The two smiled at each other for a second before turning to their host, all eyes on the blonde in the room. "Well, I guess now's a good time to introduce ourselves. I'm Joy, your Joy, nice to finally meet face to face, even though this shouldn't be happening."

"That's alright, I guess?" Riley responded with a small, awkward smile. She turned to everyone else in the room, each Emotion giving their name and role in her mind as fast as they could, given the growing impatience of the being outside. As soon as all names were given, Riley turned to the Faded Emotion to ask, "And what about you?"

Despair, to his credit, was caught by surprise. Sure, he had expected to have to introduce himself at some point, but he also expected to do it after getting Riley out of her Mind World and back into Alice's AMW. After making sure the Subconscious Figments weren't nearby, the Faded Emotion decided to respond.

"I'm J…" Despair stopped himself as he noticed just which name he was about to say, hurriedly switching for "Despair" even though he knew they picked the "J". Despite not being able to see into Riley's mind, the Faded Emotion could tell that worried faces were being directed at him, especially from Riley, whose blue eyes seemed to have lost color at the name switch. Before anyone could inquire at the cause, Despair hurriedly explained how to re-integrate Riley with her "body". "Left lever down, right lever up and press the button in the middle. Now, please, hurry up, get dressed and meet me across the street. We don't have much time before the Figments arrive."

With that, he left them to their devices, a loud explosion sounding off somewhere in the distant west. Concerned and confused, Riley did as she was told, placing both levers in position before softly placing her hand over the mentioned button. Before pressing it, she gave a look to all of her Emotions, each one of them carrying worried looks that weighed onto the girl's heart. With eyes closed in thought, Riley pushed the button and found herself beside folded clothes and a wall of light, beyond which were the Islands she was at just moments ago.

Pushing herself off the ground, the young blonde took a look at the closest Island, the one filled with yellow flowers and a blueberry bush lit in flames. The fires produced a warm, blue glow that contrasted its previous state of strange cold, filling the girl with hope as she knew who the Island represented. With determination and courage, Riley willed her attire back into existence, forgetting all of the collected articles on the ground save for the jacket, which she slung over her shoulder before stepping into the empty street, toward Music Central, across the barren road.

-3-

Alice slid across the ice, her skate-less feet gliding instead over the soft pads of a form she hadn't taken in years, awake or asleep. She glided, spun, leaped and twirled to a music only she heard, mind blank and heart flying higher than the clouds. Outside the rink sat a young boy of blueish-black hair and dark complexion wearing a blue top, ice white winter jacket and sky blue pants, his true form hidden by a distortion filter. Behind him was a camera that constantly warped around, through which Alice knew one of her Emotions was witnessing her lucid dream.

Suddenly, the ivory creature felt a cold presence in the waking realm and, without warning, she found herself across from where she was sure she laid herself just hours ago. The room before her felt cold and dark, darker than her own depression had felt just a week ago, as if someone had drained the world of light and left a void to be filled with their dark desires. Scared, the tall girl left the room to wake up one of Riley's parents, preparing herself to tell them a truth she'd kept from her until hours ago, within her dreams.

-3-

 **AN: Alright, that took langer than expected. I should probably set myself for premises that lead to shorter chapters than this one. Aside from than if anyone's confused as to how Alice appeared beside her own Sadness in the previous chapter, this one should help a bit in clearing things up, I hope.**


	4. Dominant: What Happened to Riley

"I think I've lost my audience," the tall girl exclaimed in a soft whisper, looking at a tall ivory tower in the distance. She held a chisel against a block of marble taller than her form, her breathing slowed and focused, and lightly tapped the head of the chisel with her hammer. In a puff of dust and stone, the marble crumbled and left behind the rough shape of a girl holding a hockey stick in both hands. She repeated the actions with the other two blocks, both slightly larger than the first, and got a man surrounded by prototypes and a woman holding an office clipboard, all in as rough a form as the girl.

Alice stepped away from the Andersen statues, her automatonophobia suppressed by her desire to complete her dreaming work as accurately as possible. She looked at the ground beneath her, where still memories of each member of Riley's family lazily rolled about, each one from a different angle, each one golden with a tinge of blue. As she picked one up, a scream echoed throughout her mind, distorting the reality around her to almost reveal the craggy landscape that made the actual ground of her mental World.

"What is going on up there?" the girl asked into the air, ignoring the blue dressed boy who was now shaking behind her. She stared in the direction of the ivory tower that was in reality Headquarters, keeping both ears trained for any more noise emanating from behind its walls. When no such sounds came, Alice turned back to her work, smoothing out the roughness of the statues and giving them detail and the appearance of her friend's family. She was about to finish with Riley's gapped teeth with a large, white beacon erupted from Headquarters, causing her hand to slip and break the upper-middle-left incisor.

Frustrated, Alice turned toward the tower a third time, muttering to herself that someone up there was going to be unfelt for tomorrow, and took notice of the previously unseen Island between her and Headquarters. Confused, curious and amazed, the silver haired girl analyzed the details on the floating structure, the three statues, the random, curiosity-inducing objects, the various fantastical things and machines that asked to be investigated and accepted.

ACCEPTED…

ACCEPTANCE…

The words echoed in Alice's dream-head, reverberating their meaning all over the mind. She recognized what the Island was before and what it was then; the curiosity that once filled her in her childhood before she became frightened at her true self and denied it, and the changes that lead her to now accept the truth, the knowledge of the fantastical, and go on living alongside those who also accept her. Allowing herself a small smile, the silver haired girl decided turn toward an ice rink her mind had formed long ago, opting to finish the statues later on.

-3-

Headquarters was in chaos!

One minute, Riley Andersen was sitting down across from Sadness as they discussed Riley's effect on Alice, the next; she's taken by a portal to the City with no one being able to follow.

By the console, Anger sat next to Disgust, the red Emotion plotting out a Search and Rescue mission that would most likely never be implemented as her hair lit up in a half-meter flame. The green Emotion simply stared at her companion's exaggerated motions in disbelief of her extravagant and energy intensive ideas that would put Fear's to shame. She almost wanted to say something, but kept quiet out of kindness toward her peers.

On the other side of Headquarters, where the Core Memory Module resided, Fear was attempting to pull out the renewed Acceptance Core Memory from its slot, but found his efforts futile, as the Module rose a barrier every time the spindly Emotion got close. A few moments ago, Sadness had left to search the Mind Manuals for the probable reasons as to why the Module behaved like that, but suggested that it was what Alice truly wanted.

"Fear," Anger called, her flame dying down, "do you want to end up being thrown in the Dump by that thing?" Her purple companion froze with a pole in hand, body warped to look as though the world had motion blur on an extreme level. Slowly, Fear turned to meet Anger's eyes, a heavy dose of panic already burning his veins.

"W-w-what?" Fear asked through petrified teeth, his body slowly loosening itself into a limp doll.

"Well, look at it this way; our new window is still in the making. If the Module were to rotate where in a half-circle, given where Wonder…"

"Acceptance," Sadness corrected as she read a note left among the pages of the "Personality Islands Vol. 63: Living with Multiple Personalities via Mutually Shared Realm-Space within the Same Mental Dimension" Mind Manual.

"Thank you, Sadness," Anger politely said through grating teeth. "… Acceptance Island's Core Memory is, and if you were to charge at it and get repulsed by that barrier, you'd end up falling into the Dump with nothing to save you!" By the end of her sentence, the brick's head had a two meter high inferno dancing like a mad demon, which vanished into nothing as she walked up to Fear, who cowered like a child beneath a large tormentor. Calming down, the red Emotion continued, "Look, we shouldn't even be pulling stuff out of there, not unless we want Alice to recall those specific moments of her life.

"What we should focus on is what the hell happened a few minutes ago. How did Riley end up in here?" She turned to face Sadness, "and why are you reading a Personality Island Mind Manual, Honey? Shouldn't you be looking at 'Mental Realms and Dimension Vol. 3'?"

"Know that one by heart, Anger," Sadness responded while glancing at a spot in Headquarters the Emotions had come to know as "Spawn Point", given the fact that that was where the majority of them manifested. There, underneath the second fork on the Memory Shelves, just before the first rabbit, existed a soft, blue glow with a yellow core, a glow so dim, Sadness had to focus intensely to see it. "I'm actually following up on something interesting I saw in Personality Islands Vol. 62: Dissociation."

"And what might that be, Darling?"

"Extremes," the tear-like Emotion answered as she pulled the note out of the Manual and urged everyone to the middle of the room. Once everyone was there, she began forming a plan. "Alright, here's how we're saving Joy and Riley.

"Anger," the red Emotion saluted, "When we wake up at oh-five-thirty, you're to place this Idea," Sadness presented a gray bulb to the group," into the slot. Once set, Alice will be running solely on the City. Once we're there, take to the air. Fear," she called before the nervous Emotion could ask anything, "You'll be on the rooftops. If you need to go across anything, grow wings to do so. Stay close. Disgust," the mentioned Emotion imitated her red companion, "since you and Joy have the same architectural manipulation abilities in the City, you're to manifest a wall far larger than any structure there."

"What are you gonna do?" Anger asked, feeling a familiar sensation that no one had felt since Alice was nine months old. She waited as Sadness looked past her, toward Spawn Point, and gestured to a silent swirl of yellow particles. Everyone not angled to see it turned to face it, looks of surprise plastering themselves on Fear, Anger and Disgust's faces.

"I'm going to look for our friend with the new Joy, isn't that right?" The swirl coalesced, a black, grey and white long-sleeve shirt and black jeans forming around the particles as about four percent of them turned dark blue and formed hair and irises, some turned white to finish the eyes and the rest formed the body. Her hair fell down to her neck in a fringed bob cut, some strands turning silver as she stepped forward, tired yet energetically exuberant, and her eyes showed a lazy splendor that filled the room with a strange, mystical, whimsical energy that the new Emotion seemed to hide behind a laid back demeanor.

As the new Emotion approached the gathered ones, most of whom were stuck in a perplexed trance, Disgust broke the pregnant silence as she once again let voice pass through her lips.

"What the f-?"

-3-

"-un, right?" Andre the Dream Actor asked Alice as the silver haired girl glided across the rink, a pink drink in his hand. The Blue-dressed Mind Worker watched as the towering girl twirled, leaped, figure-eight-ed and danced to a song only she heard. Slowly, Andre saw Alice change from a tall human girl of milk white skin to an equally tall creature of pearl white fur, long ears, large wings and a long, dragon-like tail. Gone was the girl dressed in black and white, there stood a lovely dragon ready for flight.

"Maybe not for you," Alice replied to the boy's inquiry, her left arm over her head and her right one gripping the curled tip of her tail. She stood still, ready to free herself in the motions of the skate, to dance to the majesty of the song, to feel as she should've felt. There, in her dreams, she escaped her pain, her depression, her broken view of the world outside. As melodies finally played throughout the rink, the fay dragon slid across the ice, gently, slowly, gracefully.

In her ears played an acoustic song of belonging, of love, of desire, of desperation and seeking acceptance, and her motions matched the words, the feelings, hers and the singer's. The song played throughout the Mind World with how strongly it resounded in her heart and echoed to the ears of a lost girl.

-3-

Riley walked across an empty street, a wall of Light behind her, her steps light and cautious. All around her, the voices of her mind were heard echoing their feelings toward the situation, each one of them speaking of a negative and a positive. One thing was for certain, Fear hadn't said a word about "spontaneous mental implosion" or "loss of reality".

Behind her, a rumbling occurred, drawing the attention of the blonde and her Emotions. As they turned, they saw the outer five islands glow brightly in their main colors, duplicates of the floating landmasses manifesting above and a bit to the left of each of them. Every new Island was in flames, blue fires licking the air in varying intensity. It was a beautiful spectacle, a magical show, a saddening display of the wonders of the Mind. It pained the blonde and her Emotions greatly; knowing who the new Islands belonged to.

"Wait," Fear's voice echoed through the streets, "why are those Islands forming? What happened?" Riley looked around in response to the voice, taking note of the signs and shops around her, the six representing Alice's personality on her side of the Square, while four representing someone else barely visible across the Veil of Light and the Island within. She studied what she could about those four, from the blues of the signs to the motif of flames predominant on all of them. Even if she couldn't see them clearly, she could feel their meaning as she stepped backward, yet she also felt as though one was missing.

That's when she looked at Music Central's sign, white and blue with a hint of black and yellow in the right corners. On the left was a bass drum with three eighth notes on its face, a white flame crackling behind it. As she looked further away from the drum, Riley saw representations of the other classical elements forming the letters, as well as other elements. The word "MUSIC" was formed by the flame, bubbling water, cracked stone and a curved funnel cloud, giving the girl an impression of nature making songs with its various facets. Meanwhile, the word "CENTRAL" was composed of frigid ice, of sparkling bolts, of shimmering light and of overtaking darkness, filling the girl with a strange completeness as she wondered what kinds of music could that portion of the sign represented. The entire sign was surrounded by the white flame, which lowered drastically in its size as it got off the drum, but returned to its original size as it reached the other side, turning blue as it got there.

"What do you think it means?" Sadness' voice asked along the streets as Riley entered the building.

"Why don't you go check the Mind Manuals about it?" Joy's worried tone answered back as the blonde observed the many instruments.

"Check the ones involving personality; those may hold better ground," Disgust said to her blue companion as the teenager took note of a stage and a bar, where Despair stood cleaning a glass. Approaching the counter, Riley noticed how the echoes matched her thoughts somewhat; the words of what could only be her Emotions referencing the current situation. "Ugh, why is this place part tavern?"

"Well," Despair responded to the voice's inquiry, "sorry if you don't like my design. It just feels suitable." The former Emotion set the cleaned glass on the counter, beside others with similar shine, and looked at the young blonde. His particle skin was completely white, like the moon's surface, and he let his hair fall in its full length, reaching down his neck with its messy silver locks. His dark green vest now sported a neon blue trim that glowed softly in the dark, the light drowned by his blue flame, which had reduced in size.

"Wow, what happened to him?" Anger's gruff voice reverberated around the barely lit room, the vibrations affecting the nearby drums solely do to the nature of the City. Despair simply kept looking into Riley's blue eyes with his own blue and red ones. With a sigh, the former Emotion picked up another glass and looked out to the streets, where a Subconscious Figment passed by, unable to enter the local.

"So," the gray boy began, his right eye turning to Riley, "what'll it be?"

"What do you have?" the blonde asked back, not knowing if it was a good idea taking anything from the establishment. Still, she decided it was respectful to at least see what was available.

"Oh, lots of good stuff for a mind." Despair said as he turned to face her again. "There's dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline – it's sort of the coffee of the Mind World –, endorphins," he looked at the ceiling, "really, anything the body makes to make you feel good and active." Riley looked at where the gray boy stared, finding nothing on the wooden ceiling to keep any semblance of curiosity, and looked back down.

"I guess I'll take the adrenaline, with a small shot of endorphins." A realization occurred in the blonde's mind. "Aren't those hormones or something?" Despair's gaze lowered at the question, his dullened features startled as though he'd just been snapped out of a trance. He looked at the girl before him, nodding slightly before heading for a back room, leaving Riley to her thoughts and the voices of her emotions.

The blonde mused her situation; within Alice's mind, hearing voices from within herself, waiting for a drink as acoustically sad music played in the background and hoping that she could find out why Alice's Joy was in the state he was. As she thought, her Sadness returned from the Manual shelves, volumes 62 through 66 of the Personality Island Mind Manuals in slightly chubby blue hands. She handed each one to her coworkers, volume 66 in for Disgust, 65 for Fear, 64 for Anger, 63 for Joy and the 62nd one for herself, and began to read its contents as fast as she could. Having read most of the Manuals before, the blue Emotion sped through the pages she found familiar until she reached an interesting point long before anyone finished the introduction pages of their Manuals.

"Guys!" Sadness called upon confirming her finding, causing a bunch of stunned "already"s from the others. She plopped the binder onto the console, a page filled with enough words to make a person look away presented to the left of diagrams of Emotions with various elemental effects countering and cancelling with their apparent ones. "Listen to this;

"At any point in life, an Emotion or Mental Entity may become an Extreme. Extremes are special Mental Entities that are made from concentrated Aspects of a Host's Mind, such as dangerously higher than usual concentrations of an Emotion's own Energy, a personification of a Personality Island, or a Core Memory absorbed upon creation by the nearest being, that are capable of seceding and becoming their own personalities. Extremes are usually born of trauma, though they can be born of other life-changing events or deliberately made by choice of the Host, an act that puts a lot of strain onto the Mind World for the following reasons.

"First, the forceful creation of an Extreme requires the desired Aspects to be pulled from where they lay, causing structural damage to Personality Islands, Long-Term Memory, Headquarters, etc.. Second, the forceful creation of an Extreme may cause the very foundation of the Mind World to crumble. Lastly, the very act of pushing the created Extreme out of the Mind World and into its own Realm within the Mental Dimension has a chance of causing a Mental Reset, possibly destroying the original Host and leaving the new Personality to control the Host Body. Extremes, and, by extent, new personalities, made this way are usually done so as to hide the original Host.

"Extremes born of trauma, or Extremes born of life-changing events, are more than capable of leaving the Mind World to form their own Personality without causing any damage to the Mind World itself. This is due to their natural essence…"

"That's all we need to hear, Sadness," Joy interrupted as she noticed a dark glow emanating from just out of view. "Fear, tell Riley to…"

"I can hear you," the girl interrupted in a whisper, "and I'm turning to it." As she did, Disgust mumbled something about paying more attention to something while Fear spoke.

"So, Alice's Joy became an Extreme of her Sadness and is now Dissociating? Is that right, Sadness?" The mentioned Emotion nodded. "That would explain the new Islands and the establishments' co…"

Everyone in Headquarters froze at the sight of Despair standing before Riley, an empty look plastered on his face as her looked through her. The console went ashen black as static covered the edges of the Mind's Eye, all light and color in the room behind the gray boy vanishing the closer they got to his oddly bright form. Riley found herself entranced by the boy's presence, her mind dulled as his mouth opened, causing the Mind's Eye to become further consumed by the static.

 **Twelve hours.**

The words echoed within Headquarters in many voices, some identifiable as the ghostly child's new Emotions', while the rest sounded dark, twisted and even angelically impossible.

 **Twelve hours from half past five.**

Riley and her Emotions felt disorientated, each being feeling a different kind of discomfort as the ghastly, yet beautiful being before them spoke.

 **That is all we're giving you to convince us…**

"Convince you of what?" the blonde asked through the blurriness, surprised at how un-slurred she spoke. A moment later the Despair in front of her turned blue, his vest changing accordingly and losing its glow.

"To convince us *o* t* d**," Despair's Sadness told the girl before vanishing, the real gray boy entering the main room with two cans, an espresso mug and a jar with a milk-like substance just a second after. As the static cleared from Riley's Eye's Mind, the gray boy took out a cup's worth of beans from the first, larger can, the beans being whitish yellow, and placed them in a grinder, setting the machine to very fine.

"So," the Once Joy began, opening the smaller can, which resembled a soda can, "how about we go to Imagination once the cost is clear? I know a shortcut we can use." He turned to Riley as the grinder finished with the grains, a light, pained smile on his features. Just as he placed a cup to collect the ground grains, the music playing stopped. "Can you press that button by your left before Alice decides on another song?" Despair asked as he leveled the grains and set the cup on an expensive looking machine.

Riley looked at the button, a single gray button on a predominantly brown wall, unsure of whether or not she should press it as was asked of her, her Fear voicing concern as to its effects. Finding reason in the voice's words, she turned back to the gray boy, who threw his emptied can of serotonin at the button without even looking away from his task. As the can fell, loud rock pulsed out of the nearby speakers, quieting down a few seconds later to allow the voice of the singer the symbolic silence her words needed. Just as the previous intensity returned, Despair handed Riley her drink in the espresso mug, its contents glowing a creamy white color.

"You know," Despair began as he pulled out a mirror from behind the grinder, a red comb manifesting in hand, "many mind workers usually come here just for that exact drink." The gray boy waited for Riley's response, untangling his blue and silver locks into a bob with a fringe. The blonde, on the other hand, took a tentative sip of her caffeine analogy, finding a pleasant kick in its sweet taste.

"Is it because of the sweetness?" her Joy asked, knowing that wasn't the reason, yet wanting to make some conversation with the Once Joy. Despair, to his credit, chuckled lightly as he grabbed a pair of scissors from a nearby cabinet and cut off most of the fringe, leaving only enough to cover his forehead.

"Nah," he replied. "That drink is like coffee mixed with thick caramel, makes you feel good and alert." He turned to the blonde as strands of his hair turned dark and continued as a nearby television whined itself to life, revealing a tall, long eared creature figure skating to the song currently playing. "In fact, a single shot of that – about as big as that teacup you're holding – in enough to trigger a sort of FoF response on some workers." As he finished, the figment outside looked toward the south and left, the Winds of Change picking up drastically as it left.

"Huh," Riley's Anger voiced in mild amusement, "guess something big is happening." The gray boy beside Riley nodded, some blue returning to his hair.

"And just as the song was ending," he remarked solemnly. "Alice is awake."

"What?" Riley asked, her Joy bouncing with excitement within Headquarters.

"Yeah, and it's only three," Despair said, causing all Emotions in Riley's mind to stop. The blonde just looked at him, confused as to the gray boy's knowledge of the time. "Something must be going on outside."

"How can it be three?" Riley and her Fear inquired in unison. "We've only been here for fifteen minutes." Despair began walking out, another can of serotonin in hand. Riley followed him out, not wanting to leave the Once Joy alone, fearing he might do something to himself if left to his own devises.

"I'd say more like forty-five," the gray boy said as the blonde caught up. "Although, you were unconscious for a couple of hours before you ended up here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that Veil had been there for an hour and a half before I made it to the Square. It somehow took me that long to even get here, what with all of Subconscious Figments moving about." To prove his point, Despair pointed at several Figments heading southeast, each one of them ferocious looking and yipping wildly, like foxes on the prowl. Riley and her Emotions stared in their direction as they followed the gray boy northward. "And though we are going through these streets, I'm sure we won't encounter them much."

"Why?" the blonde asked, looking at the cloud-covered sky in wonder.

"Because they usually prowl the heavily conscious areas, you know? To catch Alice's attention." If one were to look into Despair's mind, they would see his Anger, Joy and Disgust mirroring each other in the motions they wanted him to do, but couldn't due to the Sadness-dominated console. Riley somehow got that image in her mind.

"I wonder if we can catch her attention," Riley's Joy said to no one in particular, finding herself surprised at the absence of an external echo. Turning toward Anger, who for some reason was walking from the other side of the Idea wall, the star-like Emotion tilted her shining head inquisitively.

"What?" the blocky Emotion shrugged. "His Sadness was holding a sign that said "Tape the Intercom button, it will stop the echo"." At that, Joy seemed content, until she realized how that shouldn't make sense.

"Wait, what?"

-3-

Alice awoke with a start. One minute, she was figure skating to the most unexpected of songs,, Flyleaf's Sorrow, of all the songs in her memory, the next, she felt a dark presence in the waking realm and found herself standing by Riley's vanity. As fast as she realized she was sleepwalking while a terrifying entity was about, her Emotions had gotten up for the second time that night – first, for a certain star-like one- and were at their respective seats at the console. With Fear taking over and adrenalin coursing through her veins, Alice rushed out of the room and quickly shifted into Logic Mode, the console instantly becoming white and unresponsive as everyone got to planning the course of action.

"Alright," her Sadness began, "she toned us out. What's the plan?" To her left, Fear sat back on his seat and reviewed the facts that Alice gathered from the few seconds within the room.

"Well," the nerve-like Emotion started, "it appears we've…"

"Got nothing?" Joy asked as she stood behind her companion.

"Yes! This is like nothing we've sensed before, and we've sensed the minds of serial killers and tormentors when we visited Jabberwok! And look," he pointed to the console's white glow, which faltered and wavered every second, "Alice can't maintain Logic Mode. Even without me, she's too scared!"

"Holy – you're right!" Anger exclaimed, her nightgown and chair barely hiding her fearful vibrations. Suddenly, the console returned to the last color it held, purple, and Alice's voice tore through the Mind World louder than a sonic boom.

 **"** **WE NEED TO GET MR. ANDERSEN!"** She screamed from behind her Emotions, her mental image as young as she was on the day her mom died. Her body shivered violently, so much so that her hair bounced like grease on a stove, and her eyes were filled with scared tears. In an effort to comfort her, Sadness and Joy walked up to the frightened child and latched onto her in a warm embrace. The rest looked at the scene from their negative colored chairs.

"Okay," Anger said as she fully turned to face the girl, "what do we tell him, if that's all you could think up?"

"Everything!" Alice shouted. "If he's to understand the danger his daughter is in, he must know EVERY relevant thing!" Joy whispered some comforting words into the girl's imagined ears, managing to calm her down a bit.

"B-but Alice," Fear began, only to be cut off by Disgust.

"No, Fear. She's right," she said monotonously, her teacup devoid of its former contents as the weight of the situation hit her.

"We need to tell him everything we've just accepted," Sadness continued for her green companion, slowly making her way back to the console after Alice vanished from Headquarters. "It's what he needs to know before we tell him…"

"Tell him what!?" Fear asked in the most scared voice he could muster. Sadness just looked at him, into him, as she took her seat at the center of the console, Joy joining her in the staring soon after. They both gave tired sighs, their voices harmonizing as they typed the Recall codes for all the memories of Alice's true nature that were once suppressed before the tear-like Emotion continued.

"Tell him that," she gave her spindly companion a look so stern, it belonged on Anger's face instead, "…"

-3-

"…his daughter's mind is lost."

Riley and Despair heard the echoes roar across the City as the blonde dragged the gray boy down Song Ave., the Once Joy hopping to his feet as soon as the weight of this particular problem became too much for him to bare laying down. They looked around, confused and scared; surely, Alice knew of Riley's presence within her mind, right? She was within Headquarters not an hour ago. Maybe Sadness was voicing the facts; that Riley's mind wasn't in its own body.

Despite those thoughts as reassurance, Riley couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't actively felt, nor could she stop the flow of untold knowledge rushing into her. Visions of other's minds showed themselves onto the girl's Mind's Eye, each blurry and transparent, but gaining clarity and opacity as time went on. Slowly, she realized that the minds she saw belonged to three different people, the Once Joy before her, the tall girl whose Mind she traversed and the parent the pale girl was about to awaken.


	5. Disconcerting: A Truth, a Fear of Truth

Alice gripped the door handle as tightly as she could without bending it, her nervousness and terror causing her grip to become shaky and her breath to become ragged. She looked into the dark room, toward the sleeping figures on the queen sized bed, every fiber in her being hating her own idea about as much as she wanted to go through with it. Slowly, she calmed, her fears being pushed behind her usual, if shaky and cracked emotionless mask as she took long, heavy strides toward the one she knew would be the most capable in helping her.

Within moments, the pale girl stood beside Bill Andersen's sleeping form, her milk white skin reflecting the moonlight onto his eyes. The pale girl bent down to match eye level with the sleeping form, partially out of habit, partially out of worry and partially out of the fact that, in her panic, she forgot to get any clothes on and her crouched position obstructed a good portion of her body from view. Pushing the embarrassment as far back as her fears, Alice called out the name of her host.

-3-

"Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnddd their off!" an announcer dramatically exclaimed within Bill's dream, the man's Anger as excited about the dream as he was about a real game of hockey. The blocky, well-dressed Emotion cheered the dream players as they skated across the ice, constantly rooting for the "home" team whenever they got the puck. At one point, his excitement got so large that he managed to light up without feeling mad.

"And Cody Daniels with the winning goal!" the announcer screamed as the night's first dream neared its end, the crowd cheering in a loud chorus of "yeah"s and "hurray"s that would've deafened the dreamer if it were real. Amongst the yelling and the victorious screeching, a lone voice stood out, both by its individually low and panicked tone and by its different word from everything else.

"Bill!" the voice cried out, slightly deep, yet feminine in its tone. The sheer fear was evident in how the man's name was said, causing Bill Andersen to turn to its source. When he did, beside him he found not his wife, nor his daughter, but the newest resident of his house. In the pale girl's red and blue eyes was a primal fear matching her ragged voice as she called at the man again and again before he woke up to the outside voice.

Anger stood from his seat, a light panic on his features as he turned toward his descending companions, who stood in attention as they arrived, like soldiers before a commanding officer. The blocky Emotion looked over each of them, all dressed in similar cyan striped pajamas, all as worried as he was. There was a panicking girl behind them and they needed to assess the situation and calm her down enough to help her.

"Everyone," Bill's red Emotion started, already calmed from having been woken up, "to your seats and to DEFCON 4! If it's serious, take us down to DEFCON 2, if not, back to 5 and let's help her out." They all filed to their seats, each one functioning on the small shot of adrenalin running through Bill's system. As Anger approached his own seat, he continued to give out orders. "Joy, Sadness, you two think of something comforting, I know we're not the sharpest tools when it comes to comfort, that's usually the Wife's job, but at least we can do something. Fear, you focus on absolutely everything Alice has to say. Disgust, you make sure Fear focuses. Are we ready?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Yeah!"

"Ready, Sir!"

"On it!"

"Then let's face her!" and they all set to work, telling their host to turn to the source of the voice. As Bill did, the emotions within him saw the light reflecting off the pale girl's silver hair and milky skin, giving her a ghostly appearance in their eyes. They took notice of every feature Alice displayed, her shaking frame, her fearful eyes, her panicked breathing and even her crouched posture. The fear within her was primal, as if someone's life was in danger, and every second that passed only augmented the fear.

"Wow!" Bill's Fear exclaimed in a stunned tone, "She's definitely afraid." The spindly Emotion turned briefly to his tear-like companion before turning back to the screen. That's when Disgust picked up something off about the pale girl.

"Uh, guys," he called out, all eyes falling on his green form, "she forgot to cover herself."

"Maybe she panicked enough to forget about it," Sadness explained before turning back to Joy.

"If that's so," Disgust returned, "we may need to go to DEFCON 2, maybe even DEFCON 1!" They all turned to Anger, who'd begun making Bill speak to Alice as best as he could without making the words come out as annoyed. With a little help from Sadness, it worked, the worry evident in their host's tone as he said the pale girl's name.

-3-

"Alice?" Bill called out in a tired whisper, blurry eyes catching teary ones. "What's going on?" The pale girl before him breathed out in relief, looking out the door before staring back into his brown eyes and replying.

"I think…" Alice began, pausing to think of her next words. "I think Riley's in danger!"

-3-

"That's it, DEFCON 1, people!" Bill's Anger ordered as Fear practically had a heart attack. Almost as soon as the red Emotion said it, red lights began to flash all over Headquarters as an alarm bleared loudly.

-3-

"What?" Bill nearly screamed, sitting up to reveal his striped pajamas to the naked ghostly girl. Alice, for her part, got in front of him before he could run out the door and into the danger she had felt, using her size to deter him from any rushed action. After calming himself down a bit, Bill looked up into the tall girl's pleading eyes before asking an all important question. "What kind of danger, Alice?" The pale girl looked away from the man's eyes, instead looking out the door.

"I don't know," she said in a terrified voice. "But I do know that it involves something I've denied even to myself, something you need to know before you can help." Alice turned to look at Bill's eyes once more, worry and nervousness within her own. Whatever it was she had to say was very important to the tall girl, and Bill could tell that her next words carried with them a great heaviness.

"Well," he calmly began, "what is it?" Alice thought over her next words as carefully as she had the news of Riley's possible state, the tension within her building faster than before.

"Do you know," she slowly began her question, looking away once more, "about Supers?" Bill looked at her with scrutinizing eyes before a memory from his teenage years, as well as one from more recent times, recalled themselves. Both memories were of news reports, the first detailing the legal battles that led to Supers going into hiding, forced to live as regular citizens while the second, from three years ago, detailed the decrease in Super activity. Bill found the memories of the reports odd for a moment, having, to his knowledge, never met any Super, but decided to let Alice explain.

"A bit," he answered to the question after a solid minute, growing a bit worried as to what Alice may imply. "Why?"

Alice didn't answer, at least, not directly. Instead, she took a few steps back and faced away from him, looking out the door once more. Taking a deep breath, Alice slowly began to shift, her body covering itself in transparent fur dense enough to reflect white as two sets of wings grew below her shoulders, the top pair much larger than the bottom ones. Her ears changed in both shape and placement, moving to the top of her head as they elongated and became slightly pointed, taking similar appearance to rabbit ears. Her face, too, elongated slightly, a set of fangs taking form behind her lips as a tail as long as her frame grew from her spine. Her feet took on a digitigrade shape, adding a few inches to her already impressive height as her transformation finished.

"Because," she said as she finished, looking away from her host, "what I've been denying to myself is quite similar a topic to them."

-3-

"WHAT THE HELL IS SHE!?" Bill's Fear screamed in panic, startling everyone more than Alice's transformation. Every Emotion in the room just stared at their purple coworker as he vibrated on his chair for all of ten seconds before they turned back to the screen. Disgust raised his hand as Joy and Sadness exchanged ideas.

"Anyone sure we aren't just vividly dreaming?" the green Emotion asked, earning several nods from the others and the feeling of a weight added to his leg. Disgust pressed a button, causing his host to look down at where Alice's tail lay shaking from the girl's frightened breath. "Yup, we're awake. Great."

-3-

Bill stared at the heavy appendage with wild bewilderment, a light shock coursing through his system that was only beaten by the fact that his daughter was in danger of unknown proportions. As he curiously touched the white-furred tail to confirm its reality, he took note of its nervous spams and sluggish movement, as if it never saw use or free movement in the entirety of Alice's life. Holding the tail by its tip, Bill looked at Alice, who refused to look at him as if she were still ashamed or scared of the form she took.

"What…" Bill tried to begin, causing Alice to jump at how small, yet collected his voice was. Seeing her reaction, Bill stood and got closer to the strange creature, embracing her as he got to her. "What was it that you saw in her room?" There was a moment of silence as Alice clumsily gathered her outstretched wings, wrapping them around her naked body as she tried to collect her thoughts. Soon, the tall girl found the will to look at her host, taking in the acceptance and worry in his eyes before taking one last deep breath.

"I felt a presence," she began, looking out the door with the eyes of a scared child. "I felt a dark, twisted mind right where Riley's sleeping."

"A mind? As in a someone's mind?"

-3-

"Alright," Bill's Fear started as soon as the confusion settled, "I'm gonna take a guess and say she's psychic. Anyone?" There was a chorus of similarly sounding words that all agreed with Fear's guess.

"Should we stay in DEFCON 1, Anger?" Sadness asked his red companion, who nodded as everyone else pressed several sequences of buttons and codes.

-3-

Meanwhile, in Alice's Headquarters, the new Joy was running to and fro, collecting facts made from Acceptance Island's various components and handling them to the others, her short bangs bouncing with each hurried step she took. Happy time could wait; getting everything straight with Bill was first and foremost in getting whatever's in Riley's room out of there.

-3-

As the little lady in the striped sweatshirt worked harder than her initial demeanor let on, Alice began to move out of the master bedroom and into the hallway, Bill following closely and closing the door. They walked the short distance to Riley's room, where the aura of malevolence could be felt even by those incapable of sensing minds. A slight chill ran up both of their spines as they stopped before the door, Alice unconsciously changing to a much younger form to show the amount of terror she felt. Bill stood between the door and the girl, ready to protect her and his daughter from whatever was causing the aura's existence.

"I've never felt such a malevolent mind before," Alice said, her will about to collapse, "and I've read the minds of torturers and psychos from the deep web while visiting Jabberwok." She looked up towards her protector's dark eyes, already wanting to back out as the aura encircled her being, but not even the fear in her eyes could deter Bill's determination. As a chill calm took hold of him, as the Emotions within his Mind allowed a sort of guided Logic Mode to initiate, the Andersen male pushed the door to his daughter's room with little to no sign of the malevolence's effect on him.

At least, not until he actually stepped into the room itself.

-3-

Every Emotion within Bill's head stared in shock at the console, a dominant purple glow having replaced the reddish-white that was there just moments ago. All eyes turned to Fear, who sat with his hands to himself as he muttered many incoherent things before finally finding the perfect thing to say.

"I'm not sure how we're as afraid as we are now without me even reacting to anything, Sir."

There was silence, there was calm, there was a bit of tumbleweed bouncing its way across Imagination that the Emotions somehow knew about, and then Anger's hand met his face.

-3-

Bill stood perfectly still, every instinct in his body telling him to run. Yet his mind wouldn't listen, his body wouldn't react, he was like a statue at the edge of the dark room, of flesh and bone instead of stone. And then, the feeling was gone, the petrified man could move again. And as his resolve returned tenfold, the girl behind him simply whimpered as she stepped in behind him.

Scanning the room with eagle eyes, the brown haired man looked for any clues as to the presence, concentrating mostly around Riley's still form. As he searched high and low, Alice approached where she originally felt the Mind and, as if knowing where it went, placed the very tips of her fingers on the body's forehead. Dark images flashed before her eyes and a horrifically electric wave coursed up her arm like lightning, forcing the silver girl to take as many steps away as she could in fear of death, psychic absorption and mental torture worse than hell itself.

"IT'S IN HER!" she screamed, her terror unchained. "IT'S IN HER! IT'SINHERHEAD!WITHINHEREMPTIEDHEAD,IT'SREPALCEDHERMIND!"

"Alice!"

The wild cries of the transformed girl ceased within an instant, the chilling calm in her host's tone allowing her every fiber to collect itself.

"Thank you," Bill said in the same unnaturally calm tone, scaring Alice more than the presence within Riley's body. "Now, tell me," he turned to face her, his eyes much sterner than they've ever been, "what's in her, exactly?" A laugh broke through the air around him, distorted, both feminine and masculine at once and as cruel as the furious serenity within the mind of the voice's master.

"Why don't you ask me, yourself?" Angered, yet collected, Bill turned to the voice's source, finding his daughter's body sitting against the headboard with a twisted grin invading her still childlike features. The body laughed again, loudly, mockingly, menacingly, waking all who could hear it and scaring the shade out of the transformed child who desperately tried to fight against the extruded aura of fear. For a while, Bill and the Entity just looked at each other, the latter cackling and fidgeting wildly as it tried to make its aura affect the former.

"Alright," the Andersen man finally said after growing tired of the nonsense spewed about, "who are you?" At this, the Entity ceased all laugher and quickly grew serious, a large frown deforming Riley's face into a monstrous scowl. It growled lowly, eyes turning a dark red before the madness and insanity within it took hold once again, the laugher much deeper and more sinister.

"Just the Death of Nonillions and a whole universe, having found the perfect vessel." Bill looked right into his daughter's eyes, rage building behind him like fire in a forest or the rumblings of an exploding volcano. The Entity, for its sake, chuckled once before continuing. "You're wasting your time, talking to me. One thing that Mirlhi over there should know is that if we're talking right now, whatever insignificant mind was in here is probably off somewhere in the city, unable to find its way home."

"My daughter's mind is NOT insignificant!" Bill said with no increase in his tone or volume. "You will leave her body now!" Once again, the Entity laughed, this time only with its own voice. From across the house, a wary Jill made her way out of her room, only to be startled by the otherworldly cackles.

"Like you can do anything to me. Don't you know that, even in my weakened state, I can still crush you like the bug you are without even raising an eyebrow?" It looked away from the dark, angry eyes to bore into some scared, red and blue ones. "The Mirlhi, on the other hand, would retaliate as soon as my aura stops affecting her, which would happen if I even think of harming her now."

"Get out of her head," Bill ordered, his tone even darker than the Entity's hidden objectives. The Entity simply looked at him, a mild surprise running through it before the smile returned.

"And leave her body comatose," it said in its previous dual tone, "with only the reptilian parts of her brain causing her to breathe? Think about things for a bit; if I were to leave her now, there would be nothing to keep her going, she would be hospitalized and most likely diagnosed with either a coma or worse, brain death. There is literally no other type of brainwave in here other than my own, and I'm sure you don't want to be the one to pull the plug when they give you the option to mercy kill her." There was venom in the word mercy, causing Bill's rage to nearly tip over. Thankfully, Alice steeled herself enough to enter the conversation, her eyes turning to slits.

"I'll find her!" She exclaimed as her mask reformed slowly. She stepped closer to Riley's puppeteered body, her breath slowed greatly and her mind clear. "Even if I have to scour the whole state, I will find her!"

There was silence, there was rage, there was a woman's silhouette by the door and then there was laughter, maniacal, cynical laughter. It attempted to shatter Alice's resolve, but the silver girl, reverting to her usual form with added wings, just kept her head held high and her bravery at the frontlines. Beside her, Bill did the same, taking note of his wife's wordless reaction to the duality of their daughter's tone. Slowly, the laughter died, and with it left the dark feeling in the room. Everything shifted slightly, everything turned hollow, as if the Entity was never there to begin with. Through serious blue eyes, the Entity burned the image of its fury onto the minds of its opponents before uttering in only its chilling voice:

"Then, I wish you luck, mein freund."

With those words, it vanished, along with Riley's body, fading into the nothingness as it continued to laugh in both tones. Acting on their controlled anger and unrelenting worry, the tall girl and the dark haired man attempted to grasp the fading arm of Riley's body, Bill physically and Alice through her neglected dark powers. They both screamed the blonde's name, they both failed to grab onto anything other than each other and all they could do in the end was feel sorry for themselves until someone came up with a plan.

-3-

Alice's Mind was as hard at work as the Egyptians during the Pyramids' construction, every Emotion sitting in the seldom used Angry Configuration as they quickly formulated a plan. The fear brought onto their silver girl was all but gone and now determination filled the girl's soul. Joy rushed from the Idea Shelves to Fear's seat, placing an Idea in the slot faster than any other Emotion could perceive. As she sat opposite to Sadness, the star-like Emotion dialed a sequence of codes and commands onto her host, quickening the Idea's acceptance as she and Anger shared glances before initiating everything.

-3-

Silence filled the room, a cold, bleak silence that devoured souls and drained light. It took the man by the bed a while to notice the absence of a dark tendril around his wrist, but when he noticed, Bill somehow knew Alice had left. Looking at his wife, Bill noticed the panic and tired worry in Jill's eyes. What had just happened would mark their lives forever.

-3-

Riley ran down the burning streets, Despair trailing behind her in fearful sorrow. Throughout the entire outside happening, the blonde saw into every Mind World nearby. She saw her father's Mind as he was awoken by Alice and laughed at the silliness of his Emotions before things got serious, she saw into Alice's Mind as the Aura took hold and locked the console in a near permanent purple glow, and then she saw into the Entity's Mind, within which were five clouds of black particles that slowly coalesced into five dark dressed male Emotions and quickly got to work with the fabric of the world outside.

As the images came and went, so did many questions within her mind. Her Emotions, frantic in their work as they made her run toward Imagination, which Despair said was near Alertness, each asked inquiry after inquiry non-stop, their words heard by the blonde louder than the echoes from before. The vast majority of the questions voiced were similar in all but wording, but one stuck out among them all, despite many like it floating about.

"How are we seeing all this?" Sadness asked, reading from the Manuals as the others debated amongst themselves. Riley reacted to this question, partially because of how it matched the world around her, but mostly because of how clear it sounded within a sea of endless cacophony. The other Emotions froze in place as the blonde turned a corner and continued down the roads as the flames were replaced by thick tendrils of inky darkness, a black mist forming just above the tarmac.

"Joy…" Riley called as a neon sign became visible in the distance.

"Despair," the black-haired boy corrected as he caught up with the girl.

"Not calling you that!"

"Figures," he said with a sigh.

"Why am I seeing into other's minds? For that matter, how come Alice can see into others minds?" They stopped underneath the sign, indistinguishable in the fog and the light rain that came with the vanishing of the flames, and looked up into the sky to see countless minds pop in and out of view, some of them from within the Headquarters of the people they belonged to. Each image was different from the last in very large detail, and the more images popped up, the more Riley knew what exactly Alice was doing.

Beside her, Despair tapped into the same powers Alice was using, gathering a bit of information himself from minds containing Emotions resembling what Alice truly was. His method was rushed, but he filled the gaps with what he already knew to form a half-decent explanation, his way of saying thanks to one who helped his silver girl. As soon as the words came to him, he turned to face the blonde's mind.

"Alice's kind," the gray boy began, flinching slightly at how strange his choice of words was, "are psychic beings. Mostly through psychic empathy, though there are some who have full-on telepathy." He stopped for a while, looking around as Riley digested the information before continuing. "Alice's telepathy developed when she was four and, like all of her kind, she could hear across dimensions, which is why she can hear us whilst within Headquarters or any other place in her mind," he looked downward, staring at his naked feet before adding, "not counting the City."

Riley and her Emotions took in the information, grouping it with the memories of within Alice Headquarters before noticing two things; how could Alice see into her own mind through her powers and how come she hadn't noticed her. Determined for answers and, to the surprise of her Emotions, without their input, Riley faced the gray boy once more.

"If that's so," she began, her voice devoid of feeling, "then, how come she can hear you and not know about me? There's got to be some logic behind that." Despair chuckled at that, reminding himself just how different things were at that moment compared to the days before.

"First, because the Mind World's supposed to exist adjacent to the host, separate from the brain via a dimensional barrier as it exists in a pocket dimension generated by the host. The City, on the other hand, exists partially in the mind world, partially amongst actual active synapse." He turned and began walking north, Riley following him close behind. Within the black-haired boy's mind, Riley could see Despair's Emotions draw diagrams to help visualize the explanation, all five of them knowing that the girl could see them, now that their Realm had formed.

"Okay," the blonde acknowledged the new information as trusted fact, not sure whether or not she should really be knowing that. One quick look inside would show Fear slowly moving the crank on the console, each turn adding worry and a feeling of dread onto the girl's mind. "What about…"

"Alice knows you're here," the gray boy interrupted, stopping by a yellow door with seven fox tail decals, "just not consciously." The both of them stared at each other, neither one of them breathing nor blinking. After thinking about his next words, Despair turned to the door before walking again. "When her Sadness talked to you, she was acting on behalf of the Unconscious, and, thus, the memory of the interaction is buried deeply. As they are now, acting on the conscious, none of Alice's Emotions, not even Sadness, remember the interaction clearly enough to relay its information to her."

"How come, if she was lucid?" Riley asked as they turned right and were met with a large, Hollywood-Studio-esque gate that made her Joy hop and Despair's Anger yell in frustration.

"COME ON! We shouldn't even be near Dream Productions!" The blocky lady in black vest vented out as they came to a stop. Across from the only female Emotion in the gray boy's mind, Despair's Joy contemplated several memories Sadness had recalled, every one of them serving to form a map of the City, which, in both the already faded Emotion's mind and in Fear's mind, was an ill-advised move on their part, given the City's ever changing nature.

After realizing the problem in the layout, the grayish-yellow Emotion picked up the sound of paw pads and claws on concrete, turned to the console and slid before it, bumping Sadness into the nearby Disgust.

"Wait, guys," he called in a low whisper, body bent over the many switches and buttons, "someone's here."

"Really?" Riley asked, looking around as Despair gave her an inquisitive look before he, too, joined the search for the noises. They looked through the windows of the surrounding buildings, down the few allies nearby and even on the lampposts above them, yet whatever created the light and rapid tapping eluded them. "What do you think it is?"

"Not a Subconscious figment, that's for sure," Despair answered as his sad features brightened at his Joy's influence, if slightly. After looking around a bit more, the gray boy gave up and began walking once more, this time intent on using his architectural control over the City to carve the way to Imagination. Riley followed behind him, her Emotions noticing a shift in Despair's paradigm. Neither of them noticed the seven-tailed foxgirl who'd manage to hide amongst particles of light, her ears and blonde hair swishing in the rain's wind as her sky blue eyes stared straight at the girl she knew was the inspiration behind her.

-3-

Alice ran, her feet planting themselves hard on the tarmac of the waterlogged streets. Harsh rain poured over her frame, her hastily put clothes coldly clinging onto her milky white skin, trying to ware her down from the wild search of her friend. Her mind was frantic in its search through countless other minds in a hectic attempt to find the Entity's mind and tag it. She knew, deeply within, that it would be next to impossible for her to exorcise him out of Riley's body, so she'd already thought of the appropriate help for once she ensured she could easily find the Entity.

Step after step, mind after innocent mind, she stopped for nothing, not even her own limitations and rules given to her by her uncle and the Agency, not even her fear toward her target, not even her body's constant begging for rest; millions of minds were reached in her restless search. And amongst the millions, within a radius of a hundred miles, many of those she felt were the same as her in kind were sensed and asked for help. Help they gave, for the one she sought, they had felt before, long ago.

After an hour of running, at the entry to the Golden Gate Bridge, Alice stopped, not from exhaustion, but from her tireless task granting fruit. Behind her, in a tall building several streets away, the Entity's mind stood still, as if he were meditating. Taking her chance, the pale girl quickly entered his mind and, leaving behind her most hated Core Memory somewhere deep in the unconscious, left before she could even be felt. With her target marked, she smiled, her eyes momentarily turning a light sapphire before the outer red returned when she felt the Entity leave.

Turning to his path, the pale girl's eyes widened considerably. In but a second, the Entity was well beyond her normal range and left a psionic trail indicating no desire to stop until he was beyond even her maximum range of a thousand miles. Alice stared eastward, her mouth agape and her arms slightly slacked. Tiredness soon caught up to her, but something deep within fought against it as a burning sensation filled her throat.

Without noticing the yellow car behind her, driven by the father of the girl whose body was just taken, she kneeled down and let out a roaring pillar of black flames, several stories tall.

-3-

Bill had driven after Alice ever since he noticed she was gone, every thought in his mind filtered so that only the goal of gathering the one who may know just what exactly had just happened was present. He counted himself lucky that Alice seemed to have left a trail of the same darkness she had used earlier, most likely unknown to herself, given her rush. After a while, he thought that the trail was fruitless, but, an hour of driving almost aimlessly later, he found the tall girl by the bridge, fully dressed, on her knees and, somehow, breathing fire.

Beside the Andersen man sat Jill, who knew next to nothing of what had transpired and stared in shock at the pillar of flames rising so high out of the pale girl's mouth, she couldn't even begin to think about just where it came from. Despite the early hour, her mind was as alert as can be, and so, her Emotions were trying to find rhyme and reason to the new development in her knowledge of the world around her.

"Okay," her Fear began, looking around to meet the stunned faces of her companions, "either we've got a dragon under our roof while Riley's been taken away or we've got a pyrokinetic Super living with us while Riley's been taken. Which one seems more logical, girls?"

"Neither, deer," Jill's Sadness answered, not taking her eyes off of the roaring girl in the middle of the road. From outside their Host's Mind, they heard their husband call out to the pale girl and run out to her. Fear took control over the situation and urged Jill to go and follow Bill, but only managed to make her look at him.

"Fear?" Jill's Anger called to her purple coworker, who turned to her with the same semi-neutral expression everyone else wore. "Let's just wait here, okay?" The tall Emotion nodded and reclined herself against the backrest of her chair, her surprise drowning her panic for who knows how long.

-3-

A blonde girl and a redhead lay in a room in Minneapolis, the blonde wide awake, listening to loud music through large headphones and editing her latest video and the redhead sound asleep. With several clicks on seemingly random areas on her recording, the blonde cut away unneeded parts of it in preparation to add transitions and effects, the recently risen sun helping her decide just what kind to use as well as reminding her of her turn as the week's WRabbit.

Slowly, she worked on what she would consider her masterpiece, the main Emotion in her mind being Joy, who, thanks to a table, lay in similar form as her Host before, through her natural link to the blonde, she, and all the other Emotions, felt a tap on their left thigh. Pushing the table away from beneath herself and landing on her feet, Katelyn Parr's Joy was the first in attention at the console, the first to react and the first to give input to her wacky girl in reaction to the seemingly frantic and annoyed tapping of their orange-haired friend and hockey teammate.

"What is it, Megarina?" The hyperactive daughter of a raven-haired widow asked the one person outside of her family who knew about her powers as she looked into the tired, blue-gray eyes of her bestie, who held the blonde's phone, which showed a picture of a certain caricature of a black and white dressed pale girl who many thought was either albino or had Alexandria's Genesis until the other day. She stared at the picture for a few seconds, noticing the text on the bottom that asked her to answer as Lightweave, and removed her headphones to do so.

"Why is she asking you to answer as your hero persona?" Meg asked as she passed over the blonde to reach into her bag and grab a set of clothing to wear for the morning.

"Beats me," Kate said, readjusting her wedged undergarments before answering the phone.

"Well, when you're done, put a shirt on. Remember what happened last time your mom saw you walking in just your bra and panties?" Meg heard her friend snort at the question as she got out of the room in the direction of the bathroom, stopping only when Kate suddenly and uncharacteristically ceased. She took a few steps back toward the slightly open door, her ear at the opening and her eyes going wide when she heard Kate say:

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down! Alice's out cold and Riley's been what now?"

-3-

A lone, tall figure dressed in a tight, black, muscle-themed suit walked between trees and bushes, far away from any path and near Disappointment Mountain, the surrounding air cool and the fresh snow by her feet even colder. On her head was a dark gray mask, segmented and covering it in its entirety, on her arms and legs were gauntlets and boots of similar make and color to the mask and underneath her suit was the powered exoskeleton that connected the five pieces and made her look bulky and far stronger than her own body would let on, on its own. Her stride was calm and gentle, as was her Anger, who, alongside her Sadness, were the only ones in the dark figure's Headquarters who worked most of the time.

At a minute's walk from her destination, the dark figure heard a loud cry on the very back of her mind, a cry so loud, it sounded like a call to her from one of her other selves, across time and space, across dimensions. Stopping mid-stride, Shadowstep focused on her psychic side, tapping into her very soul to find which iteration of herself was actively reaching out for her. Within moments, she found her, one who broke every rule, one who actively interacted with her Emotions, one who lived with her own Riley and the blonde's family, one whose original Joy fell in despair instead of changing to accommodate the monster ALL Alice Reenas held within.


	6. Discern: The Mirlhi that's also a Human

Bill Andersen stood over the sleeping Alice, concern and worry evident on his features. Just a minute ago, the pale girl exhaled a pillar of flames six times her height and appeared filled with wild energy. Now, Morpheus seemed to have wrapped her under his blanket of dreams once more, where the inner workings of her mind would show their true natures. With a heavy sigh, the brown-haired man kneeled down and attempted to lift the taller, much heavier child to his car.

Managing to left Alice's frame and walk a few feet toward the vehicle, Bill noticed the soft mumblings of the sleeping girl, each word berating her own inability to do anything useful and wrongfully putting the blame for every horrific thing in her life on her. It hurt Bill to hear the once recovering girl quickly return to the hole she'd just been lifted from, but it hurt him more to actually see the pain in her sleeping face, the horrific sorrow no tear can portray. Truly, Alice's dreams were self-made nightmares, for, as the seconds passed, the words went from berating, to spiteful, to outright self-torture, all in the time it took Bill to take her to the car and lay her across the backseat.

It was then that he noticed the phone, right were Alice kneeled earlier, its screen unlocked and a contact already chosen. Stepping towards it, Bill asked himself just who Alice could've wanted to call for help so early in the morning that wasn't the police, a question that answered itself when he saw the name of the contact.

"Lightweave?" Bill asked himself as he looked at the picture of a rather young, fair-skinned Super dressed in white and light pink, several lines along the suit suggesting light segmented armor rather than spandex. Along the suit were several pink and grayish-pink ribbons that flowed beautifully, small, barely noticeable ball bearings at the far ends holding several sharp blades. The image confused Bill momentarily, the man asking himself how and why Alice had a hero as a contact before deciding to call the number and walk back into his car.

-3-

The world was gray, the wind howled, yet no sound came. Dull and desolate was the ground; bleak and devouring was the fog. Alone, in the middle of it all sat a creature of great sorrow, her white wings and gray tipped tail miserably wrapped around her large frame as she cried her life away. In her lonesome, all Vainilla "Alice" Reena wished for was for the voices to leave her alone.

"Look what you've done this time," a voice commanded from within the fog, a silhouette far larger than the almost two meter tall girl approaching slowly.

"You've attracted ruin once more," another voice mocked, another silhouette manifested in the dreamscape.

"Why don't you just go to the middle of the nearby forest and stab your pathetic, useless self to death!?" Another voice asked menacingly, its shadowed form taller than all the hundred silhouettes that had manifested since the first one's arrival.

Each and every word spoken drove the broken Mirlhi to make herself smaller and smaller, her body tightly wrapping itself into a ball as it shrank down to a meter and then to half. The Figments continued with their insults and onslaught, unrelenting in their cruelty, toxicity and malignance as the moon gray creature's own mind brought itself into the cycling habit of tearing itself apart until only the desire of death was left.

-3-

Joy couldn't believe her eyes.

After taking Dream Duty off of Disgust's hands, she turned around only to find the horror that was gloom already on the console's surface. Not only that, but, after a look toward Dream Productions, the gloom seemed to be Alice's own doing, her instincts defaulting to blaming herself for all the bad in truly torturous ways. What worse being to truly drive things far deeper than home other than one's own mind? And Alice's mind held absolutely nothing back.

At first, the shadows only spoke of the most recent happenings, of Alice's inability to save Riley's body on time. But then they brought up the past, the fires that took mom, the explosion that killed three of her friends at first and was the main cause of the deaths of the other two later in that week, leaving Alice alone to live on, and the plane crash that took Gozal's life, an event Alice knew about just as it happed, when her uncle sent her one last message saying "I wish I taught you how to fly sooner". They were relentless; their words were knives of obsidian, cutting through all the process Alice and Riley had done together like it never existed, bringing the very foundation of Alice's newfound happiness to the ground so that it could shamelessly be buried beneath an even deeper depression that would nullify even Sadness in a matter of seconds.

Joy couldn't believe her eyes!

The alarm by at the console turned on for a moment, the last effects of puberty settling in around the room and awakening a monstrous _THING_ deep within both the Subconscious and the Unconscious. It roared and thrashed in its super-dimensional chains and laughed at the self-inflicted pain Alice subjected herself to. Joy decided against registering it, against letting it call to her and simply shut herself to it. Even as it screamed her name ferociously, it seemed to have no effect on the yellow emotion as she tried to regain control of the situation, pulling and re-plugging several cables from the console as fast as she could.

It did, however held some form of influence over the nightmare, turning everything from bad to worse as it screeched and howled louder than the winds of change. The rattles of its chains could be heard even by the sleeping residents of the mind, who awoke and steered clear of the Subconscious as much as they could, most of them actively moving toward the far end of the mind. Not even the residents of Imagination could stand the feeling of dread the sounds gave them, migrating and evacuating away at a record pace.

JOY COULDN'T BELIEVE HER EYES!

The sound of a chime rang through Headquarters, a gray Core Memory rolling into existence and making its way onto the module, which rotated and released a heavily darkened gray memory that had just lost its status. Joy's eyes followed the line the ejected memory represented before, the color of her skin and hair turning whiter than she ever thought possible for a second. Floating before Headquarters in all its life-draining glory was Suicidal Thoughts Island, the varying methods of self-assassination burning their image onto the star-like Emotion's light sapphire eyes. The hard work of Alice's Emotions went down the drain in but a single night's nightmare, and the yellow Emotion quickly got to work on making sure everything was recovered by the time her pale girl woke up.

-3-

In a room within what used to be Riley Andersen's house in Minneapolis, the Joy of a red haired girl felt the reach of a psychic entity as she monitored her hockey star's dream. She looked around and underneath the console, trying to discern the direction of the call when an image replaced the dream of frolicking in the snow with her two best friends, Riley and Katelyn. Within the image stood a girl, dressed in black, white and gray stripes, her blue and silver hair and bright yellow skin drawing the Emotion's attention about as much as her worried expression.

Alice's Joy moved and pressed every button on her girl's console at the speed of a shadow, her every particle appearing in dozens of places at once. She barely registered the eyes of another Joy staring straight at her moving form when a laugh like roar resounded across the now shared Mindscape. Turning toward the eyes of the red haired yellow Emotion, the striped sweater wearing Emotion made quick use of the unexpected connection with one so far away from her.

"Whose Joy are you?" she asked, looking around and behind the other Joy for any hint as to whom she spoke. Meg's Joy simple fumbled with her words for a bit, the shock of speaking with an Emotion other than her companions washing away and the urgency in said Emotion's voice snapping her to reality.

"Uh, Meg's," she responded after a small inner debate, wondering to herself why the other Joy looked like she could give any Fear some decent competition. The other Joy simply mumbled something unintelligible to herself, once again opting to disconnect several wires from the console, to no avail in her task.

"You're Riley's friend, right?" the silver and blue haired Joy asked as she reconnected the cables and looked toward the Core Memory Module. She sighed in frustration, a puff of smoke coming out along with her breath and turned to the dream behind her. "I'm only gonna say this once; Alice is in great need of help right about now. Her very Mind is acting against her tonight."

"Alice?" Meg's Joy asked, her head tilted in confusion. A sudden realization then filled her eyes. "You mean the tall, depressed girl Riley said she was helping?" The red haired Emotion waited for the silver and blue haired one to answer, but she received no response other than the sudden mix of sadness and happiness in her eyes. "What happened? Why is her own Mind attacking her?"

"Look, Joy," Alice's Joy ordered, her tone sounding like one used by an Anger, "I need you to do something for me, when Meg wakes up in a few seconds, you and Fear need to pass this conversation from the unconscious to the conscious, no matter how dangerous it may be. Once that is done, an Idea should form. Plug it in and have Kate, who I can see you're right next to and/or in love with, place you within Alice's dream. Since she has a much larger range than Alice, it'll be cakewalk for her." She paused as another roar and the rattling and shattering of larger chains resounded once more, looking toward the Subconscious not in fear, but in annoyance.

"But, why?" Meg's Joy asked as the sound of a loud guitar riff began piercing through the drowsy shroud of sleep. "What happened?" Both Joys looked at each other, the image that allowed them to see each other fading away rapidly, leaving no time for Alice's Joy to explain anything else as she turned away, toward the Islands of Personality as Meg awoke. "Wait!" Meg's Joy screamed out as her fellow companions rushed out into the room, both in reaction to the loud music and to her screams.

"Joy," Meg's Fear called out from behind the mentioned Emotion, "what's wrong?" Joy turned to face her, the conversation already starting to leave her mind, grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the others, earning confused stares from them. Once the two tall Emotions were away from the others, Joy opted to explain as fast as she could.

"Fear," she began in a low whisper, "I need your help in converting an unconscious conversation into a conscious memory."

"WHAT!?" the spindly, curly haired purple Emotion cried out before her mouth was covered by thin, yellow fingers.

"Hear me out, Fear; just now, I had a conversation with another Joy. Not Kate's, but the one belonging to the girl Riley told us about." The yellow Emotion waited for her panicky companion to stop her attempts at turning into air via vibrations before continuing. "She seemed to be in a lot of trouble, and, by the looks of things, Riley's in trouble, too."

"But why do you want me to convert such a thing into actual memory instead of leaving it as an unconscious, nagging, yet ignored, feeling?" Fear already knew the answer; she had woken up when the roars from the other side were heard. The fabric of her being told her that the idea was a bad one, but the look on Joy's face pleaded for her help, desperately. "Alright, fine. I'll do it."

"Thanks, Fear!" Joy cheered as she hugged her purple friend. "I owe you one." She walked off toward the console, eager to work on the conversion immediately.

"Yeah, no kidding."

-3-

Riley and Despair ran through the streets of Alice's Mind once more, buildings sinking into the ground for them. They passed by several buildings containing representations of Alice's likes and fantasies, ranging from cute fairy tale creatures to majestic and strange mythological ones, to dreams and thoughts of flying through the sky to vivid imaginings of hunting down various prey with a bow and a spear, to even visions of herself as many of her favorite silver-haired characters, including Riku, inner Moka, a human version of Wheatley and Queen Elsa. The pair only took short moments to look into the buildings, then continued on their path toward Alertness, intent on riling it active.

That is, until they heard the words of the dream behind them. Many streets away from the Dream's gate, Riley turned to face the misty vail when she heard just what Alice was submitting herself to, dread and utter worry wracking her mind. Within said mind, the impact of the horrid insults and blames drained the color and happiness out of the blonde's Joy, leaving her incapable of standing unsupported by her friends. Within Despair's Mind, the gray boy's Joy sat by the currently empty Module, watching as his companions worked their way to exhaustion whilst reading the Manual on Gloom.

Both Joys were drained by the knowledge of pain, one more than the other, the one in Despair's mind deciding to do something about it. Closing the Manual and looking toward Long-Term Memory, the yellow Emotion searched for two very strong, very important memories that had failed to attain Core status by the smallest of margins. As soon as he found them, he rushed toward the console, recalling them from their distant sectors as the other Emotions were launched by his sudden appearance.

Within moments, the memories arrived, one as golden as Joy's skin and the other as blue as his eyes, and the star-like Emotion got to work with them. Grabbing both memories and tapping into the suppressed, dark powers that he knew Despair, and by extension, Alice, had, Joy merged the essences of both spheres into a cloud of energy not unlike what he was little over an hour ago. From the vortex, he pulled out a set of yellow and blue gloves, each one shimmering and made of the same particles as the Emotions, and examined them to seemingly no end before throwing them toward the screen and watching as they phased through and met with the back of Riley's head.

As the teen reacted and examined the strange pair of gloves, the yellow star felt himself surrounded by his fellow Emotions, but didn't even react to his sudden predicament and, instead, continued working on the console. Beside him, Anger nearly burst into flames as a constant stream of new memories, including some of the Core Memories, materialized and rolled into place. She growled lowly, her teeth about to crack do to the building pressure, which relented when Joy's eye moved to meet her right one, a neutral expression on the tall Emotion's features.

"Joy," the red brick began, seething with almost wild fury, "what is the meaning of this?" Around the two, Fear, Disgust and Sadness found themselves surprised at the sudden dominance shown by the partially faded Emotion, as well as his returning color, as he simply smiled and extended his arm backward. As if on que, a blue and black memory ejected itself from the Core Memory Module, the bleak Island it powered shutting down and collapsing almost instantaneously as the yellow star played with it.

"Which Island was that?" Fear asked as he looked outside, earning shrugs from everyone around him sans Joy, who studied the memory in his hands.

"Misery Island," the glowing Emotion said, throwing the sphere into the air before kicking it in the direction of the Module.

"And what does its collapse mean for us?" At the inquiry, Joy turned to face Fear, then Sadness. Both sets of blue eyes locked into each other, both beings acknowledged no one other than themselves. Then, a bright blue light flashed from the screen.

"It means," Sadness started explaining as everyone's attention was turned to the now missing blonde, "That we may have to reconsider our plan and really give Riley a chance."

-3-

Soon after she felt the pair of odd colored gloves bounce off her head and land on the floor before her, Riley saw a blue orb rolling its way toward her. Its pristine, featureless surface allowed even the smallest of light to reflect off toward the blonde's sky-like eyes as the sound of rising water reached her ears. Putting on the gloves, Riley, with the help of her Emotions, decided to walk toward the blue orb, knowing that the last time she grabbed a similar one, it had a positive effect on the pale girl whose mind she was in.

Taking cautious steps toward the blue sphere, the young teen wondered what kind of memory she would encounter upon contact, already guessing that it would involve Sadness. As a pitter-patter of clawed footsteps echoed around her, she reached out for the memory, shadowed images starting to form within. As she touched its surface, from right beside her, a foxlike yip filled her left ear and a clawed, fair-skinned hand placed itself on top of her own.

"Howdy," a childish voice called from beside the blonde, startling her more than the sudden shift in orientation, gravity and illumination. Turning her head toward the voice's owner, Riley initially thought she was staring at a mirror, but then reminded herself that she was a teenager, not a five or six year old with fox ears. The little girl in her sight wore a bright red tee with a dark blue oval on the chest and a pair of shorts, wooden sandals barely held by her toes. One good look toward the child's behind revealed several fox tails, the amount of which Riley couldn't figure as the world finally decided on a direction to throw the two of them at.

Frightened by the sudden rush of air, Riley and her younger, foxlike duplicate shouted louder than the winds around them or the many voices that manifested around them. With eyes wide open, the two watched as the ground approached rapidly before bracing for impact, finding themselves pleasantly surprised when there was none. The pair awkwardly stopped yelling upon realizing that they were, in fact, merely sitting on a red, stone-like surface and scurried to get up and look around for an indication of their location.

Looking around, the pair found themselves on a bridge, around which were several brightly colored buildings, signs and characters. People walked to and fro, many adults and children wearing or holding paraphernalia representing various Disney movies. Behind them, nearby, stood a castle of white walls and blue roofs, looming tall over a lot of things. Before them, in the distance, was a sign that pointed toward Mickey's Toontown Fair and Tomorrowland, said locations barely visible beyond the sea of black mouse ears and constantly shifting heads.

It took a moment for Riley's Emotions to figure out that they were right in the middle of the Walt Disney World Orlando Resort, mostly due to the detail-minded Disgust being the one to untape the intercom and the currently shell-shocked Joy being shell-shocked, but once they figured it out, so did Riley. Which begged the question; how come they were standing in one of the most, if not _the_ most magical place on Earth, whilst viewing a sad memory. The touch of a timid hand on her arm momentarily pushed the question away, causing Joy to recover and the Emotions to get back into action.

Urging their happy girl to turn her head to the left, to which she gladly responded by following the guidance with the knowledge that it was really all her, in a way, Riley's Emotions found themselves a bit heartbroken at the sight of what earlier seemed to be cheerful foxgirl looking like she was about to weep. Both blondes looked at each other for a moment before the younger girl pointed toward Main Street, where a rather tall child, aged maybe five to seven, walked about, looking around as if searching for someone.

Remembering the time from earlier that night, Riley recognized the pale girl, dressed in white and her hair dyed blue, as Alice, barely two weeks after her birthday, her mood a bit higher than the last time Riley saw this younger form. She looked up and down, to and fro; each time her head revolved she got closer to the young blonde. At that moment, deep within her memory, Riley recalled something. On the inside, it was Fear who inputted the command, not that it mattered to the blonde.

The recalled memory was of a trip to Disney World, roughly one to two weeks after her sixth birthday, during a weekend in which school was out due to snow. Riley's family had invited Meg's to join in on the trip and the two of them were inseparable during the entirety of it, even when…

The inside of Riley's head was as quiet as an anechoic chamber, not one breath drawn by anyone, not one particle squeaking, not even the living buzz and sounds of the console dared come out; Riley realized why the fox beside her was about to cry. Turning around, sure enough, was all Riley need to do in order to confirm the date. The 8th of February, the day she began to see strange auras around people, which shifted from one color of the rainbow to another and sometimes appeared as swirly mixtures, the day she saw strange silhouettes of creatures were otherwise normal humans walked about, some small and mouse-like, some winged and a little bit rabbit-like, the day a strange, pale skinned girl that she and Meg recognized from a park in Bloomington approached them and Meg drove the girl away in fear.

Riley watched for what seemed like an eternity as her own actual younger self walked down the bridge, Meg's hand in hers, doing their little silly three-legged walk toward Main Street. She then watched for another eternity as Alice passed her, the pale girl, currently at shoulder height with the teenaged blonde noticing and recognizing the other Minnesotan children. Riley didn't even need to listen in to the words that were to be spoken soon, her memory, old and faded as it was, spoke the words to her ears with great clarity.

"She drove her away because she saw the monster her soul held within," a childlike voice spoke beside her. Riley looked at the foxgirl, amazed at her sad monotone, and waited for her to explain. "Deep within Alice, chained, dormant until now, lies a beast with a horrifically black heart. Alice doesn't know about it, even to this day, but that's what that redhead saw; that's what frightened her and made her think those horrible thoughts, that's what caused her to drive Alice away.

"You can see the monster, too, can you?" the girl asked, her blue-gray eyes boring themselves onto Riley's. "I can see it in your memories, in the very back of your mind. Whenever you look at Alice, there's an aura, and within that aura there's the monster, calm only by virtue of not having been roused from its slumber."

"What if I can?" In truth, Riley knew what the fox would say; she knew exactly what she needed to do. She just wanted to hear what the foxgirl had to say as reassurance.

"Then you should keep doing what you've always done; you should lift Alice up and away from the hole she fallen in, for the deeper she goes, the less the chains will keep the beast at bay. And when it breaks free, it will take the weakest of Alice's Emotions, Joy, and use it against her by promising her happiness in exchange for letting it take full control." The fox looked back at the scene, and so did Riley. They both saw how the younger Alice turned and ran, crying small tears and tripling her search effort from before.

"Is it over?" Riley asked, sorrow evident in her tone. She watched as the world was replaced by a black void, leaving only Alice, the foxgirl and her.

"The memory may be over, but the Figment always remains, crying until she decides to let the memory loop back." Riley looked at the fox, her face a mixture of unanswered questions. The two of them stood in the void, the sounds of wallowing filling their ears as they contemplated the world around them. After a while, the fox turned to the teen, a small, shy smile on her features as she asked, "Could you go comfort her for me?"

At that question Riley looked at her as if to convey the obvious answer, a smile also present on her face. She turned and began walking toward the crying Figment, but stopped when she heard the fox call her once more.

"Hey, wait," the foxgirl said, her arm extended. Riley looked at her once again, waiting for her to continue. "I forgot to introduce myself. The name's Tsun, Tsun Kitsu. You are?"

Riley's face went from confused to happy once more. Now that she knew the strange fox's name, she would double her efforts in doing the favor for her. Smiling a grin as large as her Joy's, showing her gapped incisors, the blonde girl answered with her name, turned and walked up to the crying girl. As she did, the foxgirl gave her her own toothy smile, revealing to the void her fangs as she watched the scene before her unfold.

Like the mischievous Imaginary Being she was, Tsun the seven-tailed fox turned and walked out of the recollection, a door manifesting before her as she giggled and sighed.

-3-

When Meg heard Kate's exclamation, her everything went into overdrive. In the span of two seconds Joy and Fear finished the conversion, Fear and Anger pulled the levers on opposite sides of the console, Disgust nearly spat out her drink, Sadness ran from the Train of Thought's hatch to her spot on the console, grabbing the newly formed Idea and passing it to Joy, and a single, all but forgotten Imaginary Friend tripped and fell off the Cliffside, thankfully landing on the Subconscious' ledge. Outside, Meg burst through the partially open door, worry evident everywhere. As she approached the near panicking Kate, the redhead could hear a muffled, if familiar voice, slightly high, masculine and semi-authoritative.

"Hold up, slow down a bit!" the light blonde Katelyn excitedly asked the person on the other line, whom Meg had guessed to be Riley's father, Bill. "What exactly happened to Riley?" There was a pause from both sides, during which both girls looked into each other's eyes before the unintelligible voice of Bill was heard again. "Yes, I know I don't sound like the kind of person you should be talking to, – trust me; I've had people tell me I sound too young to be a hero – but Alice wouldn't have this number if she didn't know of or thought highly of my skill. Hell, not even Mach's in her contacts, and Alice once said, in a stream, that she'd like to have a speedster as a friend."

"So, wait, Alice considers you a friend?" Both Meg and Bill asked, Kate looking toward the only speaker she could see.

"Well, no," she said sadly, "says I'm too noisy. But that's not important right now! Bill, where's Alice." The blonde waited for the answer, saving the progress on her video and getting up to pack for an emergency trip. She mumbled a low "Shit!" when Bill told her Alice was blaming herself in her sleep, a word that went unheard by the Andersen man, but not by the redhead in the room. It was that one word that told Meg that whatever Kate heard must've been really bad.

That's when the Idea was inserted and instantaneously taken.

"Kate!" Meg called, earning a "not now" from the hurrying girl. "Kate, listen to me!"

"What?" Kate yelled louder than she intended, immediately regretting it.

"Alice reached for me just before I woke up."

"Wha, really? What she say?" Kate looked at Meg as if she had uttered out the biggest secret in the world, half-believing the words that just went into her ears. Meg, for her part, tried to slow the pace of the situation, knowing that her friend had her uncle's energy almost fivefold.

"Slow down a bit," the hockey star asked her friend to do while she collected her thoughts. "I need you to send my mind into Alice's."

"WHAT!"

"No, wait, listen! That's what she asked me to do, or, rather, what a part of her asked me to do. The rest of her is…"

"Trying to get herself to suicide, I know." Kate's eyes turned toward her phone as much as they could in response to Bill's voice, reminding her of the other side of the conversation. "Grab my hand," She ordered Meg in as low a whisper she could muster, the redhead doing as she was told. "If she told you this is cakewalk for me, as soon as I see her, I'm smacking her face with a hard light plate." Her tone then rose several decibels when Bill reacted to her threat. "And no, Bill Andersen, you cannot warn her when she wakes up. Now, touch Alice's forehead and tell me what happened to Riley!"

-3-

"Ah!" Bill exclaimed as he pulled the phone off his ear, the light before his car going from green to red. He applied the brakes as gently as he could and rubbed the ear that had been assaulted by sound, his wife giving him a concerned look as he did. After a moment, he turned to face the sleeping giant on his backseat, dark eyes meeting milky skin and black cloth, and reached for just above her eyes.

The second his hand met her skin, Alice convulsed violently, her legs kicking the backseat door off its hinges in one swift motion. The pale girl shook and thrashed, the car bouncing with each involuntary motion as a foreign mind entered hers like a bullet to the skull. As she shook, Bill and Jill could do nothing to escape the car nor position themselves as to not get hurt; they could only press themselves against their seats and hope that nothing else broke.

The violent shaking and the possibility of death or pain wasn't even close to being the worst part for either of them, but, rather, Alice's inability to yell at the pain she went through. It only took one look back for Jill to see the amount of excruciating pain wracking the poor child's being, horror and worry filling her mind to the brim. Even as the thrashing calmed and Alice's features relaxed, absolutely nothing could wash away the image the brunette had just seen.

As things went calm, and as the light turned green, both Andersen parents stayed still, the owner of the red car behind actually driving around to check if they were okay before hurrying off on her own busyness. With accelerated hearts, both Bill and Jill Andersen simultaneously thanked the heavens that things hadn't been as bad as they could've been and wished that what had happened that night had never happened in the first place. As the light once again went red, they found themselves surprised to hear the scraping of metal along tarmac, a look outside confirming the actions of dark shadows doing as best as they could in replacing the launched door.

With the approach of another car beside them, Within Jill's Mind was a silence as pregnant as a rabbit in mating season. For one thing, Fear was too shocked to even register the fact that Jill should be panicking, at least. Meanwhile, both Disgust and Joy wondered of the night could get any weirder, neither one of them voicing their curiosity. Anger simply let her jaw drop, an act that, once noticed by both Fear and Sadness, earned her a pair of worried faces. It was she who pressed the button to turn to look at The Husband, not that it gave Jill any emotional energy.

Outside, Bill simply lifted Alice's phone to his ear, hearing nothing but silence, as the receiver had hung up as soon as her work was done. With little to no feeling, and as soon as the light went green, he drove all the way back home in silence.

-3-

"If it weren't for you, Gozal would be alive!"

"If you hadn't been anywhere near us, we would probably be out there, enjoying the life _YOU_ don't deserve!"

"How can you continue on living, knowing that you are the reason I burned!?"

Those were the least hurtful of all things her dream told her. Even through the seizure her body had outside, Alice's dream went full force in its attempts at burying her willpower under miles of stone, attempts at which it succeeded over and over again. By the time her outside body stopped, her inner self had been reduced to the apparent size of a grape, her morale and drive just as small and decreasing.

Despite this, a part of her still fought against the harshness, against the cruelty, against the Beast. And through her fighting, that fragment of Alice reached out, and the one who answered the call had just arrived.

Meg stood behind a sea of shadow heads, the cacophony of hatred making her sick to her stomach as she pushed through it. As she walked, every shadow in her way evaporated, taking with it its voice and power and allowing her easier passage toward the weeping girl. Upon reaching her, the redhead looked at the silver-haired girl's shrunken form, infinitesimal and on an ocean of her own tears. The pale girl failed to notice the much larger redhead, the sad apathy of depression already ahold of her being as she allowed herself to sink into the salty waters.

Before the speck's hair turned damp, however, Meg picked the miserable figure from her watery grave and lifted her to meet eyes. Only once the pale girl was at hand and level with Meg's eye did Alice noticed the voices were gone and that she now sat miserably on the pinkish hands of a red haired girl, who could only look at her in pity and worry and had entered her dream, her self-inflicted punishment, at her subconscious request.

Facing her with blurry red and blue eyes, the silver haired girl wondered why one from her most stinging memories arrived to comfort her, the recollection arriving with fear, but relaxing into tranquil sorrow when the ginger child spoke.

"Are you alright?"

Contemplating, Alice turned away, her head lowered as the last stream of tears flowed onto the expansive hand. Her mind was a mess, at war with itself. Somewhere within, a savage beast roared at her in fury, its source of nourishment, Alice's despair, slowly drying up, its only lure to bring her to its level slipping away, farther and farther from its retched reach. Somewhere closer to the surface, a blue haired girl dressed in shades of gray sighed and smiled in relief, her work almost done. Now all she needed to do was wait as Alice and Meg spoke, looking toward a certain dark Island as she did.

"No," the pale girl responded after what seemed like an eternity, "I'm not." She stared at the palm where she sat, at its creases and lines, at the vessels below, barely visible through the skin, unmoving and new tears already forming.

"Wanna talk about it?" Meg asked the spec of a girl in her hand, having trouble discerning the state in which said girl was even with the ability to enhance her own sight within dreams. To her surprise, Alice vanished, reappearing far in the distance, partially submerged in a pool covered in rose petals of hues blue, pink and white. She looked filthy, bruised and malnourished, with scarring and cracks along her arms and face, and her hair was slowly being covered in inky black splotches of tar and grime, a sharp, contrasting line of cleanliness below where the strands met the water.

On her back were large, draconic wings, two on each side, white along the arm, fingers and outer webbing and an all-light absorbing black on the inner webbing. Each wing was spiked on the elbow, the lone, bony points turned old and almost like charcoal, as if aged by sorrow and burnt by an unknown hell. The wings reminded Meg of something that once scared her in the past, an event she regretted about a month later, when her seemingly useless power spiked and surged.

Cautiously, the ginger child approached the dragon winged girl, the Mirlhi, as she guessed Alice was, noticing missing dilation of time and the feeling of millions of differing lives, and sat patiently by the pond, preparing herself for quite the tale of the night.

-3-

 _The memory resets_

 _The images form the test_

Jordan walked across the empty hallway, absentmindedly making his way to the music classroom. Three of his teachers called in sick, so he had about two hours free time now and another in the afternoon. He thought of practicing with the school's only bass guitar, having brought a replacement string for it, to get ready for the next day's concert when he heard a mid-soprano singing her heart's content to a riff he'd never heard before.

 _Remembering the burn-_

 _-ning flames that left me torn_

Surprised, he approached the yellow-brown door of the music room, listening to each word as they flowed from beyond it.

 _Pain is all I know_

 _The world that I was born to_

The closer Jordan got to the door, the more he felt that he knew the singer, and the surer he was of what the song was about.

 _But one person has shown me_

 _The path to lives like new_

Finally reaching the door, Jordan silently slipped into the classroom, keeping his eyes toward were the sound came, toward a girl, a head taller than him, dressed in a cyan and green flowing dress and with long green hair with silver strands along the side. She faced the window, not noticing the boy in black who went to school with a hat.

 _But I don't know what the world would want of me_

 _What I do know is that love ends the mise…_

The girl turned around, guitar in hand, red and black glasses before her emerald eyes and a look of surprise all over her face. From just looking at her, Jordan knew she had thought the door was locked. He also knew one other thing…

…this girl was Alice, another mentality, personality, of Alice.

* * *

 **AN: This chapter's been on the back burner since May and only now did I get the inspiration to finish it. The lyrics at the end is something I came up with last week for something unrelated to this, but I felt like it could be used here and in the next chapter. In any case, see you next time.**


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